I'm new to this board and I'm hoping someone can help me. I recently completed my 3rd copywriting course (my 2nd with one-on-one coaching). As well as writing assignments, I also wrote the text for my website under the supervision of my instructor. Everything met with her approval and she was sure I would do well.

The good news is that my press release led to 2 inquiries and thereby one project. The worrying news is that although my Google Adword campaign has now logged over 265 clicks in the past 6 weeks, I haven't received a single inquiry as a result. I don't even know if this is "normal" or not.

I wrote my instructor (whose course was fairly costly), but rather than give me a few pointers, she wants me to spend more money with her (while her 'method" isn't working for me so far!) and when I voiced my reluctance to do so, she sent me here.

She was fairly insistent that the home page should not be a sales letter, but rather structured as it is on my site. Is that part of the problem (i.e. I'm not really convincing people to use my services)?

Another piece of advice was that I not post my rates since I'd probably be raising them quite often as I became busier. Could my visitors be assuming that this means I charge exorbitant sums?

My site is: PetIndustryMarketing - Home. Any feedback/ advice is welcome!

- the Pet Writer

No reflection on your inate ability... but I think you should ask for a refund if your mentor thinks that this page is going to get the job done.

There is nothing on your page that makes me want to hire you. In fact, it's a little clear exactly what you're selling.

I think that she is dead wrong. The fact that she would insist on NOT doing something that might work well is just plain scary. For you and for her other clients.

Spend some time here looking at the Web sites of the people on this board. You'll get an invaluable education -- for free -- just reading through 20 or 30 of them.

JR

I didn't even start reading. Your site just shouts "Amateur!"

The structuring is fine and can work well. But you HAVE to have a decent design. Instead of spending money on another course, hire yourself a designer. Someone who understands that you're not marketing to pet owners...but to people who make money off pet owners. And get the picture of yourself and dog off there.

This is a shame when you consider how many talented copywriters on this board (including its owner) have programs that would actually teach you effective copywriting. Simply reading and applying Caples, Collier, Schwartz, Ogilvy, Schwab, Sugarman, et al. would produce better results.

-Mike

This is fairly common to those who buy into the popular belief about writing web copy as this instructor has.

Trouble is, copywriters can point to a test result to back up everything they say. Copywriters on this board will often start with "I tested this and..." or "Here's a test result which shows..."

And that's the real difference between the people who fancy themselves copywriters and the real thing -- testing and test results. You test, you learn. And what you learn is the difference between what people would prefer to be true about copy and what really works.

You need to see the difference between what you wrote versus an A/B split run test with real response producing copy. Until then, it's just more comfortable to write that bland unresponsive stuff. It ruffles no feathers. It doesn't dare ask you to buy. It's irresistible to people who want to stay in their comfort zone more than they want to produce results.

So irresistible, if fifty people here say one thing, the tendency is to just go elsewhere to find an opinion that makes you comfortable.

The difference here is everything people tell you here is a testable proposition. You can test what the people here say, and provided you spend a little time to do it correctly, it just plain works better.

Finally, the design is just plain awful. It looks like it's was put up in 1996 and not updated since. The headline text is actually set smaller than body text. It doesn't matter which camp you're talking about, there's nobody who advocates that as good design. You don't just need to learn copywriting, you need a few courses on page layout as well. And that's just to get up to bare minimum adequacy.

Nicole,

I'd consider moving on from your instructor...

And I'd stop taking copywriting courses...

Spend time on this board. Read the posts. Follow the links, read the sites those links lead to. Find old (successful) ads to read.

Buy some of the old time (and cheap) books that are recommended by the members here. Books not so much about writing, but books about SELLING.

And then start writing...

In terms of your site... ask yourself:

-Who is my prospect?
-Why are they coming to my site?
-Where is their pain?
-How can I remove their pain?
-How can I PROVE that I can remove their pain?
-How can I get them to act right NOW to remove that pain?

Get started with that.

(And don't quit.)

I'm quite confused about this: I used an html editor called XSite Pro and the headline font size I chose is the largest while the body-text is smaller. Between my older desktop, my newer laptop & the (PC) computers of a few friends, the text seems to be showing up just fine on Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Is anyone else seeing this distortion, and if so, what are you using to view the site?

I've taken a web-copywriting course and it sounds like I should apply the principles I learned there to my website and ignore what this other instructor told me (she'd convinced me what my web-instructor told me was not appropriate for the type of site I was creating).

Thanks to all who have posted helpful & constructive suggestions.

- Pet Writer

It sounds like you need to chuck that instructor.

Your web design is so 1990's. If you're a beginner, you couldn't go wrong with a Wordpress site. Wordpress is free and any theme you use will look 2008. You could add a fun, eye-catching graphic of a dog rather than that photo.

After that, you can test different copy formats and see which works best for your market.

Good luck.

--Anita

Re: code. It's a mess.

You're using H2 heading for the pic "Nicoline-web-pic.jpg"

First off it's table based, and CSS is preferable. Next. you're using a heading for text to position your picture. Next, since you're not using a main H1 or H2 heading for text, the value is lost for Search Engine position purposes. Next, you're using H4 for the headline and <FONT face="Arial, Sans-Serif" size=3> for the body text -- completely different things.

The problem is in firefox, which is being used by a large fraction of web users and many of the tech-savvy who have the money to buy copywriting. In Internet Explorer the headline appears correctly, but the site layout has other problems equally odd looking and problematic for readability.

I could go on and on and on listing mistake after mistake. It's a coding nightmare so nonstandard It's painful to look at. And the end result is, if you fixed it all, it would still look ten to twelve years old.

The results look like week two of a course on web design being taught by an instructor two chapters ahead of the students at a community college. That's a web design course in name only, it's more history of web design. Free tutorials you find on the 'net have more up-to-date technique. And none suggest mixing heading tags and font tags.