Effective Copywriting Strategies That Will Boost Your Subscription Box Website Conversion

One of the most common things I see having seen hundreds of sub box websites is they do a poor job of creating a website that makes customers actually want to buy anything. And usually, the problem stems from poor copywriting.

In 6 years running our box we have slowly gotten a lot better at figuring out what kind of words we need to use to drive more sales on our website, and it was not a quick or easy process to learn.

Today I am going to show you how to write copy that stirs emotion, generates desire, and most importantly increases conversions for your subscription box business.

Some quick tips/things to note before we get started…

1. Don’t go overboard with text. Avoid long paragraphs. Bullet points are good not if there is too many of them.

Why? Reading is work. You want people to get clear snappy information in as few words as possible. People landing on your website have just come from Facebook or Instagram where fun & excitement is just a scroll away. If your website has too much text, they will lose interest and go back to the fun.

2. Say as much as you can with imagery

Illustrations are your friend. Try and say and show things in imagery instead of text. Box images labelled with arrows to explain what you get is 100 times better than a list of bullets.

3. Being clear is always better than being clever

Creating a cool tagline that shows off how cool you or your company is, that can be a good thing to have on your site but not so much if it is so clever that it is hard or confusing for people to understand what you mean or what you sell. Always be clear in your messaging and focus on what you sell, who is it for and why they should buy it.

So now we come to the…

Headline

The headline is the first words of copy at the top of the page on your header image. I always ask founders this question when coming up with their headline…

What are the emotions your customers have when they receive your box? What do you want them to experience? 9 times out of 10 they can give me a very clear answer on what their customers feel, experience, and enjoy about their box. But on their website, they rarely convey this to their customers.

Why? They are usually focusing too much on features and not enough on benefits. Of course, you need to tell customers what they will get, but this should be easily explained in a couple of lines, and it can be in your sub-headline or what’s inside section.

For your headline, you want to try and write something that makes your customers feel something. For the longest time our headline was ‘a monthly box of dog goodies’ and we decided to change it up to ‘give your dog the love they deserve’ because we thought about what our box does to people when they receive it, they are making their dog happy because they love them.

How to do this for yourself…

Open up a word doc and write down some of the emotions and experiences your customers have when your box arrives. In our case it was:

• Excitement
• Happiness
• Love
• Sharing Kindness
• Exclusivity (getting cool things not normally found in shops)

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You need to try and get inside your customers’ heads a little here too. We know that a lot of people feel guilty having to leave their dogs at home or just love their dogs so much they want to treat them with our boxes. Think about WHY your customers sign up to your box. Eventually, we came up with the tagline ‘give your dog the love they deserve’ – and lo and behold, conversions went up!

It may take a bit of testing and trying to get it right, but a strong headline should have emotion in there so that your customers see the benefit of your box first, because people buy on emotion and justify with logic (you’ve probably heard this 1000 times). You may need to edit and rewrite it a few times, or just write a bunch of headlines and piece together whichever sounds best to you and test it.

Optional Tip: Name your audience

This is not essential but may be good for some founders. If you target a specific niche, then it might be useful to test calling them out on your page. If your box is for bookworms, soccer moms, health fanatics, it can be useful to actual name them somewhere on your page. If your target customers call themselves what you mention on your site, they will instantly recognise and feel like ‘oh this is for me’ and be more likely to sign up.

Sub-Headline

For your sub headline I would make this informative. In our case it says, ‘A monthly box of toys, treats and goodies tailored for your pup – every time’. Again, clarity is the critical point here. For most sub box owners your sub headline should describe what you get in your box.

Benefits & Meaning

After you have done your headline and you usually have a 3-part section explaining how it works, followed by a description of what customers will get. The most common issues I see with this section or the ones that follow is they usually describe features and very little benefits.

Anytime you write something that informs customers what they will get, it usually drives a lot more conversions if you think about the benefit and the meaning. So, the messaging goes from just feature to feature, benefit, meaning.

Feature – you get a box with 2 toys and 3 treats for your dog

Becomes:
Feature – you get a box with 2 toys and 3 treats for your dog
Benefit – it is specifically tailored to your dog’s preferences
Meaning – You can rest assured you’re being a great dog parent and showing your dog how much you love them

Feature: You get a monthly box of 5-6 yoga supplies and accessories

Becomes:
Feature – You get a monthly box of 5-6 yoga supplies and accessories
Benefit – you can spend more time practising yoga than shopping for yoga supplies
Meaning – our box makes it easier for you to live your life in the positive body and mind you crave

You can do this for every feature of your box, but the most important ones are to do with the products and service. Next day shipping? Added value via online classes or community? Other subscriber-only perks?

Take each of the features of your box and try to dig into the benefits and the meaning. Make sure these are either stated or clearly implied on your website. The reason I say stated or clearly implied goes back to the first thing I mentioned in this post. Don’t go overboard with text. You can make things clear or implied by using imagery, illustrations, or a nice design without resorting to using too much text.

As with anything there is a balance, copywriting is hard to write about for a broad range of businesses because it is specific to each box. It’s something you as a business owner need to recognise, practise, and implement to improve conversions on your website. I hope this was helpful for you to get started and you can put some of these tips into action today.

Feel free to ask any questions below and I’ll get back to you.