After your headline, your call to action (CTA) is the most important element on your website. How many times have you heard or read the current ‘best practice’ around CTAs… that states one should always place CTAs above the fold? It’s a nice, easy-to-grasp rule of thumb that appeals to one’s common sense, right? Well, […]

The Ultimate 101 List of Copywriting Awesomeness For Startups & Small Bizzes That Want to Write Sweet Web Copy… Sans Pain Warning: If you plow through this list, your brain will hurt, and you may resent me for it. So please take your time with it. I don’t want to be the cause of more […]

K, so, I dunno about you… but Mariah Carey doesn’t inspire me to work harder. Yet all the “songs for entrepreneurs” playlists I find are chockerblock full o’ divas wailing at the sky. That ain’t gonna work for me… …Because startup founders don’t always need songs about reaching our dreams. Those songs can be helpful […]

Of course I’m not suggesting for a moment that your own testing efforts aren’t doomed as well, but you’re here now, so there is hope. 🙂 I make my living advising Fortune 500 companies on what to test on their Web sites and how to get the best results from their A/B and multivariate tests. […]

After The Verge published Scamworld on May 10 and Frank Kern responded with a Facebook post about it, it was hard not to wonder what might happen to the biggest players in the world of internet marketing. Lord knows there are more than a few of us ‘onlookers’ who have, over the years, heard about […]

Ever feel like you’re becoming a bit of a… diva? You should. It feels great. 🙂 My hubby says I’m turning into a shark… like the sharks we watch on “Shark Tank”. (Love Dragon’s Den, too. And how ’bout The Pitch? That’s a killer show! But I digress…) Whether a shark or a diva, the […]

Today, Ankesh Kothari over at SuccessNexus posted an interview with me as part of his weekly series, “5 Questions with an Expert”. (How nice to be called an expert! 🙂 ) You can read the full interview here: https://successnexus.com/bundling-strategy-joanna-wiebe-interview/ In this interview, you’ll find out: The one strategy I fell into… that has turned into […]

How to Become a Freelance Copywriter I’m a lucky bitch. Yes, I’m a lucky bitch. … And that’s not just because I have an amazing partner and home life and family and job. And great health. And generally strong financial security. And a sense of balance, love, hope and purpose. (Wow – I am a […]

I talk pretty constantly about one simple but uber-critical component of any brand, product or company’s messaging: the value proposition. AKA the unique sales proposition (USP). In fact, about one-third of Copy Hackers Book 3 is dedicated to value propositions. Why? What’s the big deal? Value propositions help separate you from your competition. Great value […]

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that social proof (a la testimonials) is major for copywriting success. You know testimonials are necessary. But do you know that they can – and should – help: Boost your credibility in general Highlight the types of people buying your product Showcase the various locations of people […]

9 Steps to Write Your Ultimate Home Page Headline Check out the guest post I wrote for the KISSmetrics blog: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ultimate-home-page-headline/

I’m an angry copywriter. I hide my deep, intense, dragon-warrior anger a lot on this site and in my books – I pretend I’m, like, zen – but every so often it comes out. And here it is now, showing through loud and clear: my anger. I’m angry about something. Something that might seem to […]

What the hell does copywriting have to do with testing, you ask? Only everything. Okay, that’s dramatic. It’s got a lot to do with testing, though. After all, before online A/B testing, there were millions of offline tests running in the direct mail world. Some of the greatest testers of all time were and are […]

Not everything in the world is right for everyone in the world. Your product or service is not right for everyone. It may not even be right for 1% of the world. And that’s okay. In fact, that may actually help you sell more. Consider the following ‘messages’ we take in regularly: “The following program […]

Why Your Phone Number Should be on Your Website To boost trust To close more sales To reduce prospect anxiety Most tech startups don’t have a phone number for visitors to call for support or sales. But if you offer any sort of solution that might normally – offline – require a salesperson to close […]

Let me give you a good reason why people don’t quit smoking. It’s not just because cigarettes are addictive. That’s obviously a huge part of it. The years of establishing that behavior and building your life around it – from cigarette breaks to post-coital associations – make it hard to give up smoking. But there’s […]

Break Conversion into Its Core “Ingredients” to Understand How & Why Your Customers Buy The Marketing Experiments conversion formula has been around for as long as I’ve been involved in conversion optimization. So a good 4 years. But almost no one references it when discussing conversion rate optimization. It’s overlooked. And it’s so publicly available, […]

One of my startups-in-progress is called Meetalytics, which takes meeting data from Outlook & Gmail and turns it into an infographic. I love infographics and data visualization. So when my hubby (who also loves infographics) sent me this one posted on KISSmetrics, I fell in love and had to share it… Enjoy! ++ Click Image […]

On October 26, 2010, Shereef Bishay – of BetterMeans and the recently launched ClassParrot – told the HackerNews community about some copywriting work I did for him: “Show HN: I asked an HN member for feedback and she blew my mind” on SlideShare Requests for copywriting help flooded my inbox over the course of the […]

What’s the most overused and misunderstood formatting style (or glyph) in the copy world? Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics once wrote on Copyblogger that a single bullet point sold him on a $12,000 workshop. A single powerful bullet point. In the midst of all sorts of text. Just imagine what your business would be like if […]