We know you're likely an awesome writer and/or marketer, and so we appreciate you so much for taking the time to create content for ConvertFlow 🙌

Stick to these best practices so that you'll be in a better position to write a post that's popular with our audience—and much less likely to get your first draft back with significant edit requests.

Contents

1. The ConvertFlow Audience
2. The 7 Golden Rules
3. Technical Styleguide

The ConvertFlow Audience

Readers of the ConvertFlow blog are pro ecommerce marketers at 6-8 figure ecommerce and DTC companies. This ranges from founders of their own ecommerce business, to being part of a team at mid-market brands.

These companies are usually somewhat successful with consistent website traffic and revenue coming in, and they're looking to keep growing and scaling up as fast as possible.

In other words, these people are not marketing novices.

This means two things, in particular, turn them off:

1. General, beginner-level, thinly communicated tips they've heard before
2. Over-the-top, hyperbolic language ("superpowers," "skyrocket your conversions," "the one secret most people don't know")

Instead, they want to read about well thought out in-depth analysis, new ideas, and innovative ways to apply fundamental marketing and conversion principles.

The 7 Golden Rules

If you do nothing else, stick to these seven rules:

1. Go deep, not broad. Concentrate on giving deeper analysis on a few key points per article, instead of trying to broadly cover many points via weak, shallow 'quick tips'.
2. Use AT LEAST three visual examples. Don't just make a point, show it in action. Use screenshots, imagery, social posts, video, graphs/charts—anything that helps visually make your point, and show how others are doing it. When relevant, embed ConvertFlow templates.
3. Reference your sources. If you make a claim, base it on primary source research and/or statistics—and link to it. E.g. saying that x tactic increases conversion rates by x% means that you need to link to wherever you got that stat from. Make sure any referenced studies or data are from within the last three years. And link to the original source of the data, not a listicle that got the stat from some other listicle.
4. Nail your intro. Get to the point, don't ramble, introduce a problem that the article is going to solve. Any intro that's concise and makes the reader want to read on is fine, but we like to use a hook-expand-promise formula:
   • Hook. Hook the reader in with a relevant, impactful statement that draws their attention and highlights the problem.
   • Expand. Go a little deeper to further explain your impact statement in 3-5 sentences. Agitate the problem, and explain why it's relevant and needs solving.
   • Promise. Make a promise as to what the reader will get if they read on and finish the article. What exactly will they have learned by the time they finish reading?