The following is a Guest Post from ABC Copywriting based in Norwich, Norfolk, UK. You can also find Tom Albrighton on Twitter.

Imagine you’re creating a web page to promote one of your products or services. You have been given infinite resources and the chance to carry out an A/B test on two versions of the page. There’s just one restriction. Page A can only include images and graphics, no text. Page B can only include text, no images or graphics.

Page A would be tough to build. But with careful use of icons for buttons such as ‘buy now’, you could probably put together a decent page. With a product, you could show an attractive image – although services might be harder to depict. But how persuasive would your page be?

Page B would be built in about 15 minutes, but writing it would take days. However, it’s a safe bet that it would outsell Page A. In fact, I’d be confident that it would outsell it by at least 10 to 1, if not 100 to 1.

When it comes to conversions, content is king. Yet people still approach commercial websites from the other angle, invariably speaking of ‘designing’ or ‘developing’ a presence rather than ‘writing’ one. Often, the site will be developed before its content, leaving the poor copywriter to try and cram their words into a badly fitting suit.

Why should that be? I think one reason is a natural inclination to focus on the most tangible, sensory-rich and emotionally exciting aspects of a project. People want to see something online, not just a Word document, so they dash for the finish line before putting on their running shoes. Then, when they’re finally obliged to, they start thinking about content.

They should be focusing on conversion, not diversion. Of course, a decent design is worth having. It needs to be accessible, navigable and intelligible. It needs to be attractive enough to keep visitors on the site. And, insofar as it can, it needs to persuade them to buy (for example, with eye-catching product shots). But beyond that point, there’s really no point gold-plating your design, unless you feel you absolutely must differentiate yourself from competitors that way.

Instead, invest in some professionally produced text. There’s really no point in destroying the value of your carefully developed site with ill-considered, hastily written copy. You may choose to work with a copywriter, or you may choose to write it yourself – but either way, you need to invest the time or money for an effective result.

Since copywriters spend their whole lives thinking about selling with words, it’s often worth having a conversation with them. Good copywriters know how to insert calls to action at strategic points in the text. They know how to deploy proven, empirically grounded persuasion techniques such as social proof, appeals to authority, consistency and liking. Many will use NLP principles to make their text more powerful in the reader’s mind, or give it additional emotional punch. And, last but not least, they’ll make sure every sentence is pushing the benefits of your product or service in a compelling, forceful way. If you imagine a page written without using any of these techniques, it’s easy to see how powerful the effect of good copywriting on conversion can be.

We’d all like to think that our product or service can sell itself. But the online arena has become incredibly crowded and competitive. As long as search engines work the way they do, it’s a zero-sum game and a race for the reader’s attention. Investing in high-quality content is one of the most important steps you can take towards improving your conversion rate and turning web traffic into sales.

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