She is editor & publisher of award-winning WordBiz Report, the first e-newsletter to focus on the business of words online. A former (prolific) ClickZ columnist, she is also the author of a new special report, Turning Clicks Into Customers: Proven Online Copywriting Tactics. She does a limited amount of consulting for smart clients who need quickie tune-ups of the copy on their site or in their emails. In fact, Debbie Weil is also attractive, talented and has just returned from an exotic break in Myanmar (Burma). Yes, we hate her already! Actually, just before Debbie flew off to sunnier climes, I quizzed her about her new report.

Now, as many of you already know, I can’t resist a little bit of a “wind-up”. So I couldn’t help letting my inane sense of humour get the better of me and throwing in the odd off-beat question. Debbie, a good sport (known to enjoy a little “tongue in cheek” rapport) spotted them immediately and replied with rapier like riposte. (We wonder if you can spot them).

MIKE: Because we’re all different types with different timescales, levels of income/turnover and creative ability: who should write our copy? I mean, can we just go DIY if we read your newsletters and reports? Remember, as we’re not all Internet millionaires (yet), if you say we need a professional, we may have to resort to stealing a van and kidnapping Nick Usborne in the middle of the night.

DEBBIE: Hey, this is a great question. I’ve got two answers for you. First, reality is that most companies can’t afford top-notch copywriters. If someone is really good at writing online sales copy he or she probably comes from an offline, old-fashioned direct response background where he/she was paid thousands of dollars (US) for an assignment. That just doesn’t fit most Web site budgets.

And the 2nd reason follows from the first. As Nick has pointed out eloquently in his book, until quite recently copywriting was not seen as an integral part of the development of a successful Web site. The Web was owned, so to speak, by the techies. A writer (maybe even one of the more literate programmers) was called in at the last moment to,”oh, just add some words here on this page.”

Gosh, I still haven’t answered your question, have I? What I recommend is to 1) recognize that the copy on your site is equally as important as the graphics and the functionality and 2) take a stab at writing your online copy yourself, using your best in-house resources. Then go to an outside expert like Nick (or, um, me) to get your Web copy reviewed, edited and improved. No matter how good a copywriter you consider yourself, you absolutely need to get an outside, third-party perspective to make it better.

MIKE: Does size really matter? I’ve seen web sites with very long ones and some with very short ones. In fact, some with hardly any at all… What I mean is, does longer “direct marketing sales letter” type copy on a home page/landing page work better than short bulleted type copy?

DEBBIE: Depends on who your audience is and how much you need to tell them to convince them to take the next step (whatever that is) after skimming your home page or landing page. I.e. pick up the phone, sign up for your e-newsletter (thereby giving you an email address) or make an immediate purchase. Long vs. short sales copy is a fascinating topic. I’m writing an article about it for WordBiz Report, so stay tuned for more scintillating insights than I can give you in this short space.

MIKE: In your report, you spoke to two high profile SEO’s called Jill Whalen and Heather Lloyd Martin who specialise in writing copy for search engines. They said that they had dramatically increased the amount of traffic to one site by optimising it for the words “gastric bypass surgery”. Now, I’ve included those words on all of my sites, and those of all my clients and it doesn’t seem to have worked at all. Are you absolutely certain you’re talking to experts in this report?

DEBBIE: Um, you’re joking, right? But you’ve put your finger on something absolutely key about keywords. They have to be the keywords that your target audience actually uses. Not the words you as the marketer or site owner use to market your product or service. But the words your target customer would use. It’s just so easy to be myopic and think that the insider, industry jargon you fling around is what a potential customer will use when they go looking for your service. I guess your target audience is not looking for information related to “gastric bypass surgery,” right?? Better get Jill and Heather in there to clean up your sites.

MIKE: You’ve mentioned “taglines” quite a lot in your newsletter recently and also in your new report. Can you explain what a “tagline” is and what the benefit of having one is? And if they are very, very important: how long would it take for you to knock out a fr^e one for my site?

DEBBIE: You’re pretty funny, Mike. It works like this. Sometimes a great tagline just pops into your head. Those ones are fr^e… just kidding. But normally it takes many, many iterations to come up with one that does what a tagline should do: tell a new visitor to your site that she is in the right place and that you offer the product or service she’s looking for. The tag is the short phrase that appears at the top of every page of your site, usually next to your company name. It’s often embedded in the graphic header. If it’s a good one, don’t do that. Make it HTML text so that the search engines can find it.

MIKE: What about the practical and technical aspects of copywriting? For instance, what about HTML newsletters Vs text – which is best? And fonts and formatting: should we be using bold and italic and underline? How many exclamation points should I use in my headline – eight or ten?

DEBBIE: Let common sense prevail here. As well as a dollop of good taste.The way you format a texte-newsletter with ASCII characters can say a lot about your brand. Ditto for an HTML layout. I always advocate HTML lite so that it’s easy on the eyes, prints out well, and doesn’t look like a promotional email. Ultimately, there’s a meeting point between what you as the publisher like – and what your reading audience wants. I’m very old-fashioned when it comes to good writing. Never use the word “very.” Don’t use more than one exclamation point. It’s OK to use two question marks. Hey, I’m kidding!! Decide what’s right for you and your readers. Informal is fine; poor grammar and typos are a no-no.

MIKE: Finally, I have to mention the scourge of the Internet (no – not this newsletter): Spam. What are your thoughts? Once the Spammers themselves start replacing characters with an asterisk as so many newsletters do these days: what happens then? Does email marketing still have a future?

DEBBIE: Sigh… I wish I had the answers. Yes, of Course email marketing has a future. I am hoping that a bunch of folks cleverer than I – and with keener political instincts – will come up with a solution that controls the amount of sp^m without compromising the instant and unfettered flow of information that defines the Internet. There’s gotta be a meeting between what’s technically possible and what is politically and economically feasible if we’re all going to continue to use the Web as a platform for doing business. Sorry to sound so serious. I’m pretty confident we can control this if we (publishers, marketers, ISPs, corporations, government, etc.) work together.

Thanks very much to Debbie for that excellent contribution. Turning Clicks Into Customers: Proven Online Copywriting Tactics, the new report from Debbie, is getting excellent reviews. Jonathan Jackson over at ecommerce-guide.com says:

“Thankfully, we now have Weil’s pithy words to guide us. By carefully reading Weil’s superlative advice, marketers should be able to make their copy both enjoyable to read and profitable. The best of both worlds. This is invaluable advice that can be put to use immediately, and well it should.”