Page 73 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

30 THERE’S GOLD ON THEM
THAR WEBSITES!

Although corporate websites are fun to design and build—and
write copy for—the real work on the web, at least in the commercial
arena, gets done on e-commerce sites. Long before the web was
invented—or its progenitors conceived—copywriters were staying
up late trying to figure out how to part people from their hard-
earned in exchange for their or their clients’ products.

Now, on Amazon, eBay, and thousands of other e-commerce sites,
copywriters are carrying on this proud tradition. Question is, how
do you do it? It turns out not to be so very different from the pre-
web days, though search engine optimization is an issue (that we’ll
return to later).

The idea

From an organisation selling collectable gold coins on the internet
My client markets a wide range of collectable coins and gifts—all in
precious metals. My brief was to write copy for around 40 e-commerce
pages, each one focusing on a particular coin, set or gift.

My job was to give the copy a fresher feel. To make it more web-
friendly. And to make it work harder to sell coins. For each of the
flagship products, the copy had to follow a new page template
developed by the client in collaboration with their web designers.

There are three main sections: an overview, product information,
and background and history. To these I added “Thinking of a
gift?”—a short paragraph positioning the coin or collectable as a
gift and using less technical language.

64 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS