Writing Website Copy – A Beginner’s Guide

If you’re having a new website designed for your small business and have no budget left to hire a professional copywriter, there are a number of things you need to know before you start writing the copy yourself.

Here are 5 basic tips for writing website copy if you haven’t done it before;

• Who are you writing for?

Defining your target market is a must before you write your first word of copy. Your text should be written so that it’s as relevant as possible to the people you think are most likely to buy your products or use your services.

It’s useful to create a typical customer profile so you can aim your text at a specific person who is representative of your target market.

• People read differently online

People read websites differently from books, newspapers and magazines. Research has shown that we tend to scan information online rather than reading it in detail as we would with offline materials.

So before you write a huge paragraph of text for your website that would rival War & Peace, think about how easy it would be to scan for the most relevant information. Using bullet points is a great way to get your key messages across online.

• Your headlines need to grab attention

It’s widely accepted that you have about 3-8 seconds (depending on the research you read) to grab someone’s attention when they arrive on your website. With so much competition online, you need to have a great headline on each of your web pages to grab attention and make people want to read on.

If you have “Welcome” as a main headline like so many websites do, then many people will leave your site straight away. Try to think about why someone would be searching for what you do and then write a headline that will arouse their curiosity or that states a relevant benefit.

It’s also a good idea to include the keyword or phrase you want to target in your main headline for search engine optimisation purposes.

• People want to know the benefits

A very common mistake people make when writing their own website copy is to concentrate on features rather than detailing the benefits of their products or service.

For example, if you were looking to get quotes from local carpet cleaners, would you want to know the technical specifications of the machines they use or would you rather know the benefits such as how the service will help to prolong the life of your carpets?

If you don’t convince people of the benefits of your product or service they are very unlikely to part with their money for it.

• If you don’t ask, you don’t get

Another very simple thing that often gets missed when people write their own website copy is a call to action. This just means asking people to take the action that you want them to, for example adding “Call us now to arrange a free quote” at the end of the main body of text on each page.

If you liked this article you may want to read 5 reasons to keep your content fresh

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Copywriting, Guides for Beginners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.