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Copywriting techniques that make web copy work harder

Positive framing, power words, headline formulas and the two words to delete from your mission. The copywriting techniques I keep using, with examples.

Originally published on The Copy Galaxy.

Most website copy is fine. It’s grammatical, it’s on-message, and it does nothing. What separates fine copy from copy that moves someone is a handful of small techniques applied consistently. These are the ones I keep coming back to.

Name the outcome, not the thing you’re preventing

When you’re selling a solution, name the solution instead of the problem it avoids. Say “our tables are soft on the floor” rather than “our tables won’t scratch your floor”. Both are true, but only one puts a scratched floor in the reader’s head.

That’s the whole mechanism: people visualise what they read, so promising something won’t happen still plants the image of it happening. “The roof doesn’t leak” becomes “a leak-proof roof”. “Stop losing money” becomes “save money”.

Two shortcuts make this fast. Reach for “proof” and “free” as suffixes, so doesn’t burn becomes fireproof and doesn’t smell becomes odour-free. When neither fits, go hunting for the antonym: find peace instead of avoid chaos.

Say the opposite isn’t true when you want emphasis

There’s one exception to positive framing, and it comes from Storyworthy. Read these two lines:

The second grabs you harder, because the inversion makes you sit with each part of the sentence instead of skimming past it.

You can do this to your own copy. Take a line and find a way to say the opposite isn’t true. “Not your average” instead of “special”. “Not cheap” instead of “expensive”. “Don’t hate” instead of “love”. “No fees” instead of “free”, since free gets said so often it stopped registering.

It works on headlines too. A tool claiming to be “the best way to review creative assets” could say “not the worst way to review creative assets”. Weaker value proposition, maybe, but claiming you’re the best usually admits you can’t differentiate, and the inverted line at least has a sense of humour. Same with “data protection, simplified”: people don’t want to simplify things unless they’re stuck in something complicated, so “data protection, but not complicated” does more work.

Trade the first word that comes to mind for a stronger one

Every language has synonyms for hundreds of words, and no two mean quite the same thing. Good or amazing. Small or tiny. Big or huge. You can feel the difference, and so can your reader.

So when a word lands on the page too easily, question it. “Complete” can become all-in-one. “Smarter” can become cost-effective, which is more specific and therefore easier to believe. “Simplified” can become accessible, and “fast” can become lightning-fast. The stronger synonym is almost always the one that’s more specific or easier to picture.

Power Thesaurus is my tool of choice when nothing comes on its own. One warning: some words got strong through overuse and are now worn flat. Skyrocket, boost, seamless. Skip those.

Alliteration is fun, and clear still beats clever

Alliteration puts two or more words starting with the same sound next to each other, and it makes a line stick. You know it from PayPal, KitKat and Coca-Cola, from slogans like “Britain’s best business bank” and “Don’t dream it. Drive it.”, and from headlines like “We solved side sleeping”.

Does it look good? Definitely. Does it lift conversions? I’ve never found data either way, so I use it when it turns up on its own and never force it. Clear still beats clever.

Power words cluster around seven ideas

Not all words carry the same weight, and the heavy ones all point at one of seven ideas: new, easy, safe, big, cheap, exclusive and fast. That map beats any list, because once you know which idea you’re missing you can generate your own words. Still, a cheat sheet helps:

The real technique is auditing what you already have. Take a page reading “data protection, simplified”, with a subtitle promising it “integrates in minutes” and is “pain-free”. Simplified is easy, integrates in minutes is easy and fast, pain-free is easy. Three power words, one idea. For a product handling other people’s data, safe is what’s missing, so “expert data protection, simplified” earns more than another push on easy. A spend tool selling “7-in-1”, “the complete solution” and “one simplified stack” runs big, big, easy. Add fast: “make smarter spending decisions in half the time”.

Which ideas you need depends on the product and the buyer. Finance means safe is non-negotiable, automation means fast and easy, high-end means exclusive. Choose deliberately instead of grabbing the nearest punchy word.

Write ten headlines, reinforce three, refine one

A headline makes or breaks everything underneath it, whether that’s a landing page, a homepage or an ad. And the fastest route to good ones is volume, which sounds like a cop-out but is the part most people skip. You’ll hear people say to write twenty variations, and the useful question is what counts as one, because changing a single word qualifies and teaches you nothing. Go for significant changes instead, since those surface a genuinely different angle. Same logic as A/B testing: start with big swings, fine-tune afterwards.

Spray it. Write ten headlines that differ from each other. Templates break you out of your own patterns, so cycle through them: how to, a comparison, a list, [benefit] without [struggle], the …est way to get [benefit], and the formulas further down.

Reinforce it. Pick your three favourites and load them with power words from the seven ideas above. No word limit at this stage, so let them get bloated.

Refine it. Pick the winner, rewrite it in fifteen words, then rewrite that in ten. Then go test it.

Do I believe in headline formulas? Not really. Are they useful when you’re staring at an empty page? Every time. These survived my own curation:

Six structures for when the page won’t come together

Copywriting formulas do more than headlines. I use them to design landing pages and to practise explaining a product until the explanation sharpens up. Six are worth memorising:

AIDA on my old newsletter, for example: “Do you have a SaaS company? Are you struggling to increase your MRR? I’ll show you how to increase conversions with free UX and copy tips. Sign up to get three each Friday.”

The formula is never the copy. It’s scaffolding that gets you past the blank page, and you take it down once the thing stands on its own.

Google your copy before you publish it

Finish a line, then search for it. If it comes back thousands of times, write something else. “We’ll save you time and money.” “So you can focus on what you do best.” “AI-powered.” Everyone claims these, which means nobody owns them.

The more a phrase gets used, the less it does for you, and past a certain point it just marks you as one of the crowd. Unique copy gives you a chance to stand out, and occasionally to name a category nobody else has claimed. Habit picked up from Harry Dry.

Delete “help” and “want” from your mission statement

Company missions read like this constantly: “We want to help companies improve their social media presence.” Every clause is hedged. You want to help? Just do it. And why help them improve? Improve it for them. The sentence works hard to avoid committing to a claim, and readers feel that even when they can’t name it.

“We grow your social media presence” is shorter, braver and easier to believe. So delete “help” and “want” whenever you explain what you do. Credit to Kerry from Copy Comrades.

Every channel rewards a different instinct

People arrive on each platform for a different reason, and copy that ignores it gets scrolled past. Roughly:

Notice how much of that comes down to validation. Social platforms run on it, so copy that gives someone something worth being seen sharing travels further than copy that only informs. Inspired by David Patrick.

Continuity is the part most people skip

Continuity signals care, clarity and professionalism, and people buy from companies that show those traits. It’s also among the easiest things to get right. On a website that means buttons at the same size, shape and colour, with only a primary and a secondary format. Font sizes in multiples of 6 or 8. Two or three fonts at most. The same layout logic on every page.

It counts for even more across a marketing flow, because no asset lives alone. Ads lead to landing pages, landing pages lead to forms, and forms lead to calls or products. So if your ad promises X, the landing page reinforces X with the same headline, the same image and the same words. Every match keeps the reader oriented and moving forward, which is what you paid for when you bought their attention.

Start with the page you already have

None of this needs a rewrite. Open your homepage, check whether the framing names outcomes or dodges problems, count which of the seven ideas your power words hit, then Google your own headline. One afternoon, and you’ll have copy that reads like you wrote it on purpose.

KV

Kjell Vandevyvere

Fractional marketing for B2B tech companies

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