Writing for Dualities

For most businesses, there are going to be multiple attributes to write for. Many times, you can intersect two attributes and allow the interplay to carry through the whole piece of copy.

This often comes up with the classic “iron” (or “unattainable”) triangle: speed, quality and affordability. In this triangle, you can have one or two of the attributes, but you can’t have all three.

This means that many pieces of copy have to break down the advantages of having the mix of attributes that they have. Sometimes there’s a speed versus quality argument, a quality versus affordability comparison or something that pits affordability against speed.

Emerge Richmond, the small business division of my current employer, Key Web Concepts, has a mix of cost-efficiency and professional quality.

Quality Web Design at a Good Price

Unlike our Key Web web designs, Emerge designs use a page builder to cut out development costs. Small businesses and startups get a professional-looking website for a good price.

The duality of these two attributes is strongest on the Web Design page, starting first with the headline:

“A Bad First Impression Is Costly. A Good Website Doesn’t Have to Be.”

Instead of highlighting the affordability of the website directly, the indirectness creates space for a broader statement. The first sentence implies wasted business opportunities due to bad first impressions and bad first impressions due to a bad website.

By highlighting this cost first and then provide a solution in the next sentence, the problem-solution stage is set.

Agitating the Problem While Covering a Lot of Ground

For the body copy, I knew I wanted to play out the duality of quality and affordability.

The headline teases out the two problems that the body copy needs to agitate before providing a solution (following the PAS copywriting model). The explicit problem in the first half of the headline is the costliness of a bad first impression (i.e. a bad website). The implied problem from the second half is the struggle for an affordable website.

To agitate these dual problems, I needed to divide and conquer.

First, I tackle agitating what happens with a poorly-designed website and present the most expensive route as the solution to poor quality. I then follow this up with a cheap alternative that threatens poor quality. With both routes exposing their weaknesses, the concluding sentence shows how Emerge solves both problems.

With the first half of the page laying the groundwork, the second half goes into more detail about the features of Emerge’s web design process. All along the way, I reinforce the duality of affordability and professional quality with examples of where Emerge adds value for the reader.

It concludes with a cheeky suggestion that the previously mentioned friend-of-a-friend stay just that: a friend. Leave the web design to the professionals. 

Feel free to read more on the Emerge website.