Why Great About, Privacy and Terms Web Copy Matters
Why About, Privacy and Terms Pages Matter
"Those pages don't matter because no one goes there," said someone who should know better today. Your About, Privacy and Terms copy may not show up often in your sales funnel (pages visited before a purchase), but, like many web metrics, appearances deceive. About, Privacy and Terms pages matter because:
- Advocacy is lost when inconsistent with a site's "voice"
- Influential people visit these pages
- They define character and character sells
Losing Advocacy
About, Privacy and Terms aren't sales pages, but they can make people leave, not recommend and possibly bad mouth your web site. Write great web copy for the mundane instead of being ruled by lawyer generated boilerplate and your reward is the hardest advertising to get - customer word-of-mouth advocacy. Woot.com writes unique, fun, engaging web copy and people talk about it and love their site:
What is Woot
Woot is a gaggle of unique companies. Or half a gaggle, at least. Woot Services LLC operates the websites and keeps the motor purring; Woot Workshop LLC provides creative content and mans the stereo for the ride; and Woot, Inc. sells the merchandise and pays for the gas. The aforementioned websites, of which Woot.com is the alpha URL, focus on selling cool stuff cheap and encouraging (almost) unfiltered community discussion about that cheap stuff.
Mavens and Connectors
Most web traffic is 1:10:89. 1% contributes the low cost gold of user generated content (UGC), 10% vote and interact with content created by the 1% and 89% consume content created by the 11%. Not all poeple are equal Gladwell's The Tipping Point explains. Some help others understand (Mavens), some help connect (Connectors) and some sell (salesmen). As a Director of E-Commerce for a multimillion dollar site I noticed a consisted 2% - 3% visiting our About, Privacy and Terms pages. I couldn't statistically prove if these pages helped or hurt sales, but I noticed a large number of our Buzz Team visited before signing up to help create content and write product reviews. Time on these "throw away" pages was greater than our best product pages. Traffic may be low, but About, Privacy and Terms pages are important Internet Marketing tools.
Follow Technorati