The majority of travel companies that have taken their product to web have used their offline brochures as a starting point. On the surface, this seems like a great idea – you’ve got all this content that’s worked for years offline… why hire a copywriter to rewrite your work? The truth is that this reasoning could really damage your sales for one simple reason: the internet and the real world are two very different places. Your customers might (possibly) be the same, but the way they behave and what they expect is completely different. What you need is a director’s cut of your brochure, keeping the delicious descriptions while obeying some simple rules to make that online sale.

As should be apparent for long-term readers of our newsletters, search engines don’t read text in the same way humans do. They need to figure out what the text is about via intelligent placing of keywords, selected through meticulous research. Your brochure won’t have had this kind of preparation because, well, search engine spiders were never considered the target market! A page written with search engines in mind won’t guarantee instant top-rankings, but it has a much greater chance than a page copied directly from an offline brochure!

That’s not to say that the page isn’t for humans too – they’re the ones buying the holidays, not the search engine spiders – but it has to serve two masters. You need short (but delicious) texts to entice your readers, which at the same time has enough key phrases for the search engines to process.

When a customer opens a brochure, you have something of a captive audience. Their choice is limited to the number of brochures they can feasibly keep within easy reach. On the web, there are a seemingly infinite number of holiday providers, and the consumer isn’t afraid of checking them out ahead of yours.

How can you avoid this? Get to the point quickly! Buyers don’t want to strain their eyes reading paragraph after paragraph of descriptions – they want to know whether the product is for them, and they want to know fast (I’m very aware that I’ve broken this rule myself here, but I’m in educating – not selling – gear!)

I’ve already mentioned the text-length issue, but that’s just the beginning of how offline copy should differ to online. The differences are subtle but important: you need shorter paragraphs, sentences and descriptions. You need a clear structure with obvious headings and sections, with a clear call to action (order a brochure, request a call back, etc.) at the end. In a way, it’s far more overt than offline marketing, but the truth is that online customers don’t have time for the softly-softly approach. It may seem a little more crass, but this really does work – and we have the testimonials to prove it (speaking of which, these are also something you should include!)

This may seem a strange one at first, but bear with me. When you read a brochure, you see the cover and you begin to read knowing full well what it's about. This isn't the case with a website - it's the equivalent of opening up a book on a random page without looking at the title!

Therefore, web pages need stand on their own without requiring content from other pages to help you make sense of them. You need obvious headings, and less evocative content. Common wisdom suggests that web users will take less than 10 seconds to decide whether a page is for them, based on a quick scan. Make sure that, no matter what page a user lands on, that they have enough information to quickly understand exactly what it is your business has to offer.

Offline brochures are like books – they’re designed to be read sequentially. Sure, you can dip into any section, but once you’ve picked a category (say, a resort) you’re expected to read the details of the place, the hotels, the rooms, the facilities in the order intended by the brochure writers. Online customers are free of these constraints and want to be able to read up on whatever takes their fancy. You can hyperlink certain words, say Costa Del Sol Hotels to allow people to duck between sections with ease. It’s functionality that’s expected, and it isn’t in offline copy for obvious reasons! This also has additional SEO benefits in getting your pages ranked higher, but I won’t go into that here – just accept that it’s a good thing!

It may sound like the least of your priorities when you start a website, but tailoring your copy to web readers can make a massive difference to your conversion levels. And if your copy isn’t to their liking, there are hundreds of other sites that will give them what they want!