Writing persuasive web content

Mar 02, 2006

Personally, I don’t believe in writing persuasive text for websites just for the sake of it. Writing, any form of writing, should be effective, convincing, and should state the truth. I think you are at your writing best when you speak the truth, when you really believe in what you are saying. Idealistic? Yes.
In the real world this cannot happen all the time. For instance, when a webmaster or a web designing consultant approaches me to write content for his or her website, I visit the website or the links provided, get the basic understanding of the thing, and if the work suits my temperament, I agree to write for the website.
I write convincingly because anyway I write with a passion and that is manifest in whatever I write — well, most of the time. So far it has never happened that I have had to write for a product or a service that I’ve previously used or have found extremely useful and hence wax eloquent about it. Oh yes, I’ve written about various blogging tools and I’ve used the major ones and it had been a satisfying experience.
But persuasive? I think we persuade people if we cannot convince them, and I don’t think this is the right way of writing for websites. You need to get your message across lucidly, convincingly. Your words should brim with truth and enthusiasm, without resorting to hyperbole. Yes, to get heard over the din sometimes you have to speak loudly, but that too should be done just to get the attention, and once you’ve achieved that, you should write in a manner that should touch your readers, not hit them.