For Web Site Owners: Highlighting Savings for Budget-Minded Consumers

When you redesign the copy on your business web site to provide variation for regular site visitors, you can select a new focus for your written messages. This article discusses some tips for how to target your copy to budget-minded consumers. Before redoing your copy, consider this thoughtful approach to redesigning copy. For people with less cash to spend or a desire to save money, targeted copy is just what they need to influence their spending decisions.

Writing for Your Audience

How well do you know the consumers who visit your web site? Have you ever done a survey or used another method for gauging their needs? For example, database-driven web sites can store the purchase history of each customer, allowing for the site owner to target emails, pop-ups, and other messages to customers who have indicated interest in specific products.

Amazon.com uses a technique to recommend products based on previous purchases, such as suggesting book titles on pregnancy when a customer previously purchased a pregnancy self-help guide.

When you revise your web site copy, keep in mind that the slower economy changes the spending habits of consumers. People spend differently when they have less cash than when cash is aplenty. For example, cash-strapped customers might buy store-brand cereal instead of their favorite brand cereal when saving money is important.

Write copy that appeals to customer preferences and a desire to save money. Your web site should provide language that is easy to read. You can balance readability with written content that provides helpful information to customers.

Drawing Attention to Special Offers

When you write copy for selling products, you have to make decisions on word count for copy like product descriptions and special offers. For the budget-minded consumer, the way you describe a product's special price or an offer designed to save the customer money may make the difference. You can write persuasive copy that is not overly pushy. Readers should get the point that you have found a new way for them to save money. Don't provide copy that emphasizes how customers have less cash to spend in a tight economy unless that is your intended message.

Explaining Changes in Pricing

Much like retailers advertise their deep discounts on Black Friday, you can design copy that highlights special pricing. For example, if you have discounted the prices of all kitchen products by 5%, you can make this point in your copy. When you choose how to deliver copy, you can also think about visual formats such as cartoons, pop-ups, banners, slogans and captions, and copy included in artwork.

How can you draw customer attention to lower prices and special offers in multiple pages without making it too obvious?

Fees for Transactions

Online fees are another way to save customers money. If you use a service that charges the customer a transaction fee, you can consider adding PayPal or another service for which the customer pays no fees. Another popular concept is to offer free shipping for your products. You have to balance how much shipping will cost you with how free shipping will increase your sales. Look at any extra costs that your customers might pay and how you can reduce or eliminate them for consumer savings.

Targeting your web site copy to your audience is important. If customers are strapped for cash in a slow economy, redesigning copy that appeals to their revised spending preferences just makes good business sense.