Conversion Paths and Writing Style

We’ve talked about conversion paths in a few places lately, like on design for conversion paths and a blog explaining conversion paths in-depth. For a recap, a conversion path is every path a visitor takes before taking the desired action like registering, contacting you, or making a purchase. Pretty much every step of most conversion paths involves writing of some kind. It might be the written part of a Facebook post, information on a blog, or a description of a product or service. One important thing to keep in mind with conversion paths is the style of the writing.

You might remember a few different styles of writing in school, like persuasive writing, informative writing, and so on.  If you try to sell to someone who doesn’t even know what your product is, they’ll be unlikely to commit. And reminding someone ready to about the very basics of the product instead of a way to purchase won’t do much good. The video below touches up on a couple writing styles for conversion paths.

Informative Writing

Informative writing is all about teaching and education. For informative writing, you should be writing about something you know about. Imagine a business owner who is a professional painter with 20 years of experience. This person could be considered an expert or authority on the subject of painting. What they say will be more valuable than some guy who threw paint on his wall once. Informative writing can be giving helpful tips, explaining the benefits of a product or service, or refuting bad information or myths that are out there.

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing is all about convincing people to do something. A lot of business Facebook pages and conspiracy theory videos are trying to persuade you to do something or stop doing something. Persuasive writing sometimes gets a bad rap for being “salesy”, but that’s only one way it’s used. Those long rants that are usually shared around Facebook with some emotional “tell it how it is” tend to be a kind of persuasive writing too. It’s okay to use persuasive writing; especially when someone needs that little extra convincing!

Which writing style is right for a conversion path?

That depends on what your goal is for the specific conversion path. And you can have several different paths with different writing styles for one website. One path might be informing someone on Facebook about what you do. Then that link could go to a form that they fill out to get an eBook with more information. Since these people are still researching, getting information might be most important. They may not be ready to buy yet, but maybe after learning more!

Other conversion paths might be directed towards people that want to buy something. Email newsletters with discounts can use a persuasive writing style to convince someone to buy something now. Or you might just want to convince them to come and meet with you in-person.

There are plenty of opportunities to use different writing styles in your conversion paths. If you want to learn more about this, feel free to get in touch with us and let’s talk!