A quick copy hack – last to first

I spend an afternoon recently with my favourite website designer. We’re collaborating on a book project, and we looked at website after website.

I learned a lot about website design – and I also noticed something really interesting about the copy. Even on some great-looking sites the copy was back-to-front.

Again and again, we saw copy that would have been more powerful if the last sentence in the paragraph was switched to become the opening sentence. The benefit to the customer was at the end – not at the opening.

So have a look at your website copy. What’s the first sentence in each block about? What’s the last sentence in the block about?

If the last sentence in the block is about customer benefits, then do a quick rewrite. Don’t change the overall content – just put the last bit first.

I’ve written about customer-centred copy before in my post 4 steps to smarter copy – if you’d like a bit more on “how” that could be useful.

It was really surprising how many awesome-looking websites still had this happening in copy on their Home and About pages – so it could be worth a quick double check.