Are you talkin' to me? The 30-second tool for better website copy
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Famous in your field tip: use the We We Calculator to test your website copy’s “we we” score
You’ve slaved over your website copy. Polished it to perfection and agonized over each word. (“Spectacular” or “stupendous”…which conveys exactly the right level of awesomeness?)
But is there a teeny, tiny chance that in your rush to present you and your business in the sparkliest spotlight possible, you overlooked something kinda big?
Like, your readers?
When you’ve got less than 8 seconds to grab attention on your website before your visitor clicks away, there’s one thing that will do the trick:
Talk about them.
Talking to your website visitor about themselves, the struggles they wrestle with (ahem, that you can solve) is the sweet sweet honey that attracts beautiful bees.
Because it can be tough to judge your own website with outsider eyes, I’ve got a killer tool that lets you know in seconds whether your website copy is seducing your readers or turning them off.
It’s the We We Calculator.
Just copy and paste the text from your webpage into the We We Calculator’s to find out your “we we” score. The calculator measures several ratios, including the number of times you talk about your customers, compared to the number of times you talk about yourself or your company. They call this your CFR or “customer focus ratio.”
“As you can see, we parse your page for self-focused words such as “I,” “we,” “our,” and your company name (which functions much like “we”), as well as for customer-focused words such as “you” and “your.” Then we calculate several ratios that indicate whether your visitors are likely to perceive you as genuinely focused on them,” says Bryan Eisenberg, one of the creators of the We We Calculator.
Makers of the We We Calculator recommend aiming for a CFR of 60 or better.
Flip that flaw
What do you do if you test your website copy and find out that your CFR is downright pitiful? Don’t fret! Make a few tweaks to see if you can flip that flaw to focus more on your customer.
Let’s say that you’ve got three statements just like this on your website homepage:
We treat every communication challenge as a business challenge. We absorb sales and marketing plans and business goals and objectives, and determine how communication can deliver against them and become a tangible business driver for our clients.
(Do you feel like you’ve been we-we’d on?) And can you guess the CFR score on that snippet?
CFR = 0.00%. Zero customer focused words
Self focus rate: 100% (3 self-focused words.)
Click! Your visitor just left the website.
But it’s not hard to flip it, so that it has the same basic message, but shifts the focus to your customer.
You’re looking for an agency that treats every communication challenge as a business challenge. You want partners who absorb sales and marketing plans and business goals and objectives and determine how communication can deliver against them and become a tangible business driver for you. That’s what we do.
BOOM! With the tiniest tweaks, the Customer Focus Score flips.
CFR = 66.7%.
Self focus rate: 33%
Your fame boosting assignment
This week, pick two webpages to run through the We We Calculator. If your score is less than 60%, zero in on the “we” and flip those flaws.
C’mon, superstar! We’re waiting for your magic. Seduce us, you sweet talker you.
So very important. I am a believer in website copy is the most important part of a website. A lot of websites fail with this, especially on the home page.
What a great tool you shared and love the name 🙂 I was just thinking this morning that I need to write a post about this, now that I have a tool to share, even more reason 🙂
I know – isn’t that name hilarious? I had a colleague who would say “don’t we we all over your client.”
Yes, please write a post on this! I see this phenomenon so often in company websites, but even solo biz owners and practitioners fall prey to it. Way too much “we.”
What a cool tool! Thanks so much for sharing this Lori! I’m going to share all over social media. It’s that freakin’ awesome!
Aw, thanks chica! You could probably use it when you are working with clients to write web copy. Tt would be easy to show clients their score to persuade them to follow your genius copywriting advice.
Dang, that’s cool! I love the example – you can really feel the difference! Thanks for sharing – I’m going to run my website through it, too…
Great info and tool – Thanks!
Someone just asked me, what is the biggest mistake people make when writing copy. I answered, the failure to focus on what deeply matters to their clients. In other words, too much we-we and not enough you-you. I had no idea there was a tool to catch such mistakes, but even with the tool, as you pointed out, you need to know how to turn your copy around so it’s all about your clients.
Great tips, as always!
Thanks for the tool Lori. I will use it on my site copy to see how it rates in client attractiveness. Love the example.
This is great! I’ll check this right away. I didn’t know this tool existed. Thanks for sharing the info!
First off… Hilarious! Secondly…very cool! And I never quite looked at it that way before, but makes total sense! A new toy I can play with today !
Are you talkin’ to me? The 30-second tool for better website copy
You’ve got less than 8 seconds to grab attention on your website before your visitor clicks away. I’ve got a killer tool that lets you know in seconds whether your website copy is seducing your readers or turning them off.