Ask HN: Tips for writing compelling web copy.

Read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, the granddaddy of all copywriting books. Do it now. It's very short, it's available online for free, and it has no fluff and all useful information.<p>It was written a few years ago, so it doesn't have the latest techniques for maximizing conversions for SaaS products.<p>However, it's written for direct response advertisers and not brand advertisers, so it covers the basics of getting sales, tracking, split testing, etc very well.<p>You can take the techniques Hopkins presents for writing short, effective classified ads and apply them very effectively, with minimal modification, to your AdWords ads and landing pages.<p>These techniques have been tested by dozens of advertisers since, and they work VERY well.<p>A good copywriter will usually charge $10-$15K plus a percentage of sales. I would strongly recommend bringing your copy skills to "Good enough" and doing it yourself.

Sadly I haven't got the time to give as detailed an answer as this deserves but.. even if you do the lion's share of the writing yourself, at least hire a professional writer to give it the once over once you're done in order to catch any particularly bad syntax or constructions (and to get another set of eyes over it, too). This should only take a couple hours of their time if it's a typical SaaS site and would be worth the $50-$200 peace of mind. I give this advice as someone who's written for a living for &#62; 10 years and who still benefits significantly from third parties looking over his work.

Copyblogger (<a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.copyblogger.com/</a>) is a pretty good resource.

I think I have mentioned this before, but an excellent guide to advertising copy can be found in: David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man (ISBN 1-904915-01-9).<p>It's considered a seminal text among copy writers. I found it very helpful, for exactly this purpose.

The opening words of Strunk &#38; White were never more applicable: vigorous writing is concise.<p>Keep it short and to the point. Test it on readers. Do they understand? Great writing is produced by great editing. An iterative process.<p>The $10-15k comment sounds wacky to me. You can hire a decent editor off your local craigslist for 25-50 an hour. But you probably need to bring it in-house; you'll need to pivot your prose points pretty phrequently.<p>PS:<p>"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."<p><a href="http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+elements+of+style+strunk+white&#38;sourceid=mozilla-search" rel="nofollow">http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=the+element...</a>

I useful trick I learned is to try and avoid a "Features" link (unless you have a very deep app). The user should be able to tell if the app has the features he wants from the front page.<p>Also, sell. I learned the hard way that under-promising in order to over-deliver may work for the users that do sign up, but it's not worth it for the actual drop in users that do.

There's a lot of good advice here. If you can find a good marketer, it might make sense to use them in the short term while you study up on the reference materials here. There's no reason why you can't attempt to come up with some copy at the same time as the marketing agency and see how you do.

Go to amazon and search for the book called 'Cashvertising".

I've been writing web copy for 7 years, and, although the advertising guys referenced so far (e.g., Hopkins, Ogilvy) are great, their tricks focus largely on direct response (i.e., long form letters). Use those tricks for writing PPC ad headlines, etc -- but be careful on your website.<p>On your site, your copy should set a tone for your service; get your value proposition right; be scannable; and err on the side of clear rather than clever.<p>Tone can be tricky because it's easy to get carried away... but check out Mint.com for examples of how to stay light &#38; friendly but also professional &#38; credible. As for your value proposition, check out MarketingExperiments for their tips on writing a value prop that resonates --- and that goes beyond "save time and money" (which every company seems to default to, making that phrase totally meaningless).<p>Regarding scannability, that one's pretty straightforward. Short, snappy headlines. Bullet lists with 3-4 bullets; concise copy in your bullets. No paragraphs over 3 <i>lines</i> long. Bolding used only for things that will be important to users (not just things you wish they would care about). Great typography to help users see the words they're supposed to. Not too much dedication to the rules of grammar (keep the reading level at about grade 5 or 6; Word can help you run tests to see what level your copy's at).<p>As for clear over clever, that means writing "88% of our users saved 6 hours on payroll last month" rather than "Payroll, meet your match".<p>(SEO, persuasion, emotion, etc. can always follow after you launch.)<p>If all else fails, I'm happy to read over your copy and offer recommendations. I'm at joanna AT page99test DOT com. Good luck!