Small is Beautiful

In 'Don't Make Me Think', his excellent book on web usability, Steve Krug neatly sums up his typical advice to clients looking to improve their websites:

"Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left."

That, in a nutshell, is the essence of writing for the web. For well-documented reasons, including the difficulties of reading on screen and the impatience of web users, copy for websites must be at least 50% shorter than the off-line equivalent.

You can see this process at its most extreme with Google Adwords, those dinky little text-only adverts that Google places on its search results pages. These promo-spots are some of the most hard-working places on the Internet: click-through rates of upwards of 5% are not uncommon, and conversion rates are also good.

Adwords are an extremely powerful form of online marketing, and yet they are also very tiny. You are restricted to two lines of 35 characters each, plus a headline of 25 characters.

To make matters trickier yet, Google are very fussy about copy style within Adwords banners. Their guidelines include:

• No exclamation marks in title
• No use of excessive capitalisation (like 'FREE')
• No use of excessive punctuation (more than one exclamation mark in copy)
• No repeated words
• No superlatives like 'Best', 'Cheapest' or 'Top'
• Limited use of promotional language like 'Limited Offer'
• Phrases like 'Click Here' or 'Visit Our Site' are not permitted

Worse still, Google strictly enforces these guidelines. Banners will be withdrawn for breaking a single guideline � and my record is breaking three of them in a single banner.

So, from a copywriting point of view, what's the best approach for Adwords?

Here are some basic tips:

1) A click is all you need
You aren't trying to sell a product off the back of an Adwords banner - you simply need a click through to a page or microsite that will clinch the deal. So don't waste your precious word allowance trying to cram in a list of key features.

2) You are not alone
Your banner will appear alongside search results and other banners all likely to relate to the same product. Ignore generic advantages ('Protect your loved ones with life insurance') and focus instead on what makes your product unique.

3) Facts outrank fluff
Simple, factual prose will outperform marketing puffery. People using Google are primarily hunting for information. If you can offer the facts they require (e.g. 'Free impartial guide to new car prices'), your Adwords banner will perform extremely well.

4) There is still room for the 'high concept'
All this can sound rather utilitarian. But when all is said and done, this is an advertisement - and a primary aim of advertisements is to excite and entice.

The word count may be punitively tight � but there is still room for creative thinking.

As an exercise, I took one of the all-time classic advertising headlines � David Ogilvy's work for Rolls Royce � and squeezed it into the Adwords format.

The original reads: "At 60 miles-an-hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock."

Trimming the copy a little from the off-line version, we get to this Adwords copy:

The new Rolls Royce
At 60mph, the loudest noise
Comes from the electric clock.

Finally, here's the best advice of all: test, test, test.

Google Adwords lets you run one copy treatment up against another in a split test. What's more, it's a cheap place to run tests - and you get the results pretty much in real time.

Profile

Mike Teasdale is Creative Partner at Harvest Digital (www.harvestdigital.com) - a specialist email-marketing agency. Harvest was set up in October 2001 to help clients to exploit email as a standard marketing channel alongside direct mail or brand advertising. Harvest clients include one of the UK�s big five banks and a major international drinks brand. Mike has extensive new media experience, and teaches NMK's 'Copywriting for Digital Media' course.