6 reasons your copy is falling flat and failing your readers

“Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?” I crooned along with Avril Lavigne in my middle school years, putting my vocal chords (and my poor parents’ patience) to the test as I wailed along with her on my bedroom stereo. And years later, that same line reverberates in my head all the time as I read through created content in dire need of drastic changes.

Here’s the issue: A great product just doesn’t do enough to get attention. I’m constantly amazed by how little people understand readers’ patterns, when, if the writers would just think about their own skimming patterns, they would understand how to generate more user-friendly content.

I get it, it’s a difficult pill to swallow to realize the content you’ve worked so hard on will be so easily overlooked and disregarded. But the reality is, people skim content to save time and find the information they are searching for. Accept it and move on. It’s the only way to maximize your impact.

What’s more likely to attract attention: Over half of users said they preferred ….or…. 56.8% said they preferred our product. Even when skimming a page, the way a statistic is showcased can mean the difference between attracting a reader’s attention or not.

You know that giant chunk of text you spend hours phrasing so carefully? Yeah. That one that perfectly articulates the benefits of your product or service? It does no good when your reader gets overwhelmed by the third word and looks away. Good news is, there’s a simple fix: break up your copy with fewer sentences per paragraph. And, be sure you aren’t introducing more than one idea per graph.

It’s great that you haven’t novelized your copy.

But writing like this isn’t helpful either.

You have to attract your reader’s eye to the key points. Cues like italicized or bolded statements highlight the important topics and ensure they aren’t overlooked, as do numbered or bullet-pointed lists.

Don’t just tell them what you want them to think. Wouldn’t you rather I engaged with you in a variety of ways, rather than just talking at you? Don’t you think readers who come to a conclusion about a product themselves are more likely to turn into consumers? And have you been answering these questions in your own head this whole time? Did I convince you yet that this works?

It seems so simple. But time and time again I see copywriters submit content that sounds like it was written by a robot, or is so bogged down with technical terms that it’s just not fun to read. If you don’t want to read your own writing, can you really expect anyone else to either?