Our response is “What does your business do?”

The most important thing to remember is that your website must be clear. Even if you think what you do is really obvious, it doesn’t hurt to say for example ‘We design websites’ as opposed to ‘we can write you a collection of HTML code and other digital assets that are addressed to a common Uniform Resource Locator’…huh?!

Below I have outlined a few things to remember when writing the pages of your website:

Home
Think of this as your magazine cover. This is where you have your 3 seconds to make an impression and avoid the ‘back’ button being used. Things to remember when writing the words for your home page are to BRIEFLY outline what your business does and how your customers will find you beneficial.

Services
What services do you provide, how much do they cost and what can your customers expect?

About us
This is your opportunity to make your customers feel confident that you are the industry expert. What qualifications do you have? What’s your experience and background?

As I said previously, keep the words simple, easy to understand and if all else fails, we have an in-house copywriter who is always happy to help.

I certainly know how this feels . . . . !

What I hear from clients, more than anything else, is that they’re worried about writing their text.

It’s a funny thing, everyone assumes that it’s a difficult job, as though they’ve been set an essay question, but really, writing your website is the easiest thing in the world.

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do and tell me about your experiences. It’s a simple thing to do over the phone (pretty much everyone does that with Aimee when we first get in touch anyway), so why is doing that in a word document any different?

It’s only a psychological difference, people can talk for hours about their company, but putting it down on paper somehow seems a bit final. But it ISN’T.

Firstly your text needs to go through me, and I’ll plump it up a bit where it needs plumping, or take a few words out if it seems a bit long. We’ll get rid of your spelling mistakes and makes sure it all makes sense.

And after that, if you’re still not happy, you can always make changes through the CMS.

So, please don’t stress about the words. You know your business better than anyone; trust yourself to write about it.

What could be better than tea? Tea and biscuits!

My favourite person in the office is always the person who made me tea most recently (currently Mark – cheers Mark!).

A little tea or coffee break gives me a chance to step back from whatever I’m doing, and when I get back to it, I come back with a little extra energy and enthusiasm.

Whilst a caffeine-prompted energy boost might be good for my brain cells, I’m always very careful not to let it seep into my text. Enthusiasm is good, but let it show in the writing – not the formatting.

All that energy will usually make you look pushy, if not outright desperate.

So cut down on the CAPITALISATIONS and EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!

Trust me, you’ll look a lot more professional if you use them sparingly – and that way they’ll stand out more and have a better chance of drawing your customer’s eye.

It's all about YOU!

Ever put together a campaign, pouring time, effort and money into it, being enthused and excited, only to get to launch day and discover that your customers weren’t nearly as excited as you were?

A month ago that was how the General Election was looking, like an exercise more for the politicians than the electorate, and there were expectations of a historically low turnout.

But now here we are on May 6^th, and facing a totally different election.

And the difference is because the voters feel like they are really involved now. The television debates were an opportunity for the leaders to actually connect with the public, and for the public to feel like they had a connection and a place in the political landscape.

Getting your audience involved is a lot harder when you’re talking at them, and not with them. That’s why making a sale face to face can be easier than sending a leaflet, and why the debates were more effective than releasing editorials in the papers.

Being a person instead of an institution is hugely beneficial, but how can you achieve that on a website?

Step one is to speak to your customer and not at them – identify what they really want to know, and tell them about it.

Step two is to use those opportunities to drop in why you provide that service better – how you’re cheaper, faster, better qualified, better quality.

Step three is to make their choices clear – make your ‘buy now’ button, your contact page and your list of services really easy to find and easy to read.

In the end it’s up to the visitor to make up their own mind, but sometimes a little involvement is all they need.

Everything looks different from an alternative angle

Nothing in this life is certain, except death and taxes (unless you live in California).

When you look at your company, you already know why you’re the best. You know about your unique selling point, you know why people should choose you.

But when a visitor comes to your website, they come there without any of that knowledge. You need to make it clear to them from the outset, not just what you offer – but why it will work for them.

You have to take on their perspective of your business before you can convert them to yours.

No - vote for ME!

How many people ever actually read the election manifesto of a political party?

Other than other politicians and political commentators/analysts, I’d guess fairly few.

I’m saying this as someone who is passionate about politics; I’ve tried and failed on many occasions to get through a manifesto, and I know I’m not alone.

Reading a manifesto for a party is a lot like a reading website for a company. You want to know who these people are, what they do, and how that helps you.

It needs to open with a brief introduction that explains why the things you offer are right for me, next you need to go into detail about these services, products or policies and reinforce why they help me.

You also need a place where people can find out more about you, what you’ve done in the past, where you aim to go in the future or any other important facts about your company, party or movement.

Simple, really.

Of course, for politicians, knowing that very few people will ever read their work can be a bonus. They write manifestos for the professionals, knowing that the public will only read the actual policies – you know, the bits they actually WANT to know, without having to wade through the extraneous information.

Maybe if they just cut out the blurb and focussed on the voters, more people would be interested enough to read the manifestos in the first place. . . .

. . . .

.  . . . On an interesting side note, reading the introduction to the three big parties’ manifestos showed up a difference in language that I’m always banging on about.

I mean of course, “we” versus “you”.

And here’s how the big 3 scored in their introductions:

Meaningless from a political point of view, naturally, but always of interest to this copy writer!

A particular client of ours has an information-based business in an industry that is constantly changing, which means regular re-writes to stay relevant.

Failing to keep your site up to date with your business or your industry can quickly make you look careless – or worse, incompetent.

Re-writes can sometimes be a struggle, you try to keep as much of the old information as you can, and slot the new stuff in, and that often leads to really simple mistakes (and believe me, I’ve made them all at one point or another!).

The most common error in a re-write is the “copy and paste” mistake. This is when you lift a new sentence or paragraph and put it into your content without checking that the words around it lead into it properly.

There are also the “tense-change”, and the “shifting persona”, where your new text uses “we” instead of “they” or vice versa, or moves into a different tense.

Make sure that someone reads to whole page of text before you publish it – and not just the new bits. That way you can make sure the new info blends seamlessly into the old content.

Well, they aren’t exactly wrong, but if you can tell me what “goldfish bowl facilitated conversation” is then I’ll eat my hat-shaped chocolate items.

Jargon can sometimes be a really useful tool, so that people in your company or industry know exactly what they’re talking about. Sometimes jargon is just empty gibberish that could easily be replaced by normal human phrases.

Either way, the last thing you should ever do is inflict jargon on the public. At best they’ll be unimpressed, at worst they’ll be confused, and confused visitors won’t hang around on your site to find out what you mean, they’ll click back to Google and find a company that speaks plain English.

Of course, it’s harder to find yourself a new local council, so it’s easier for them to get away with it.

Great News! It’s actually very easy to write good text for your website. You just need to follow a few simple rules:

1. Nobody Cares About You
   You get to pay for the website, but realise that it’s not actually for you…it’s for your customers. Visitors to your website don’t care about you…they care about themselves. Visitors don’t care how many years experience you’ve got, who you’ve worked with or how you started out. If they want that information they’ll click on your “About Us” page.
2. Everybody is Selfish
   Visitors do care about what you sell, how it will help them, what it costs, how soon they can get it, what guarantees they get. You know…stuff that matters.
3. Everybody is in a Rush
   It doesn’t matter to your visitors if you are not great at writing long wordy sentences full of business speak and jargon. In fact, they’d prefer it if you didn’t anyway. Our golden rule is say what you want to say in as few words as possible. Bullet points and lists are ace. Big long boring paragraphs are not, because you will be the only one reading them.
4. Don’t be Self Centred
   Try to use the words “we” and “I” as infrequently as possible. Try to use the word “you” as frequently as possible. Following this rule helps you to connect with your customers. Not following this rule means you are going to bore your visitors (potentially to death). If you struggle with this, go ahead and write your “About Us” page first. Let it all out.
5. So What?
   Remember the old marketing adage “Benefits, not Features”. Every time you talk about a feature of your product or service, try and turn that sentence into a benefit that your customer will understand. (simple example: using a particular material is a feature, a smooth finish is a benefit)
6. Take a Bullet!
   The easiest way to write any web page is just with bullet points. It makes you focus on what’s important and stops you getting distracted by wording and style. Once you have a bullet list of all the things you want to say on that page, put them in order of relevance and then you can flesh out each point into a sentence or short paragraph.

SERVICES

The best place to start writing is for the Services page*. This is where the bulk of the information needs to be, and you can focus on what your products and services are.
Writing your Services page should help you to get a good idea of the aspects of your service that you really want to focus on. Whether it’s a particular product, your style of working or your prices, identifying what makes your company different will help you with the next stage – writing your Home page.

* If you have “we & I” syndrome as per rule 4, start with your about us page.

ABOUT US

The About Us page is the place to really focus on your business, the experience, skills and qualifications you have that make you able to provide your fantastic products and services. This is the page to tell people about how long you’ve been established, the story behind your formation, or your firm’s ethos.

HOME

Think of your home page as a magazine cover or a product on a shelf in the supermarket. Use as few words as possible to articulate the MOST IMPORTANT messages about your product or service. Customers will on average spend 3 seconds reading your home page, before deciding whether to click “back” to Google or to stay on the site.

Your Home page should never have more than 1 – 4 short paragraphs (preferably sentences), ideally with headlines, which briefly explain what your company can do for your customer.

Try to structure your paragraphs a little like this:

“You need X because of Y, and our service helps you with this you because of Z”

ANY OTHER PAGES

Follow the simple rules listed above and you should be just fine to create the pages from herein.

(I should point out that our copywriter Hannah wrote most of this content!)

The beginning isn't always a very good place to start

The most useful trick to writing is learning how to order your essays. Chronological writing from introduction to conclusion usually leads you to meander through points and doesn’t focus on the important issues.

The easiest way to construct an argument, essay, experiment or website, is to split it into three stages; an introduction, an explanation, and a conclusion.

And the best place to start writing it is in the middle.

The middle is where all the meat of your arguments are, it’s where all the important details are kept. And in a website, the middle is your Services section.

All the important details a customer needs about what you provide will be on those pages, and getting them written first will force you to think hard about what your business provides and what makes it exceptional.

Once your services section is written, you’ll have a far clearer idea of what your company’s USP is, and that’s the point to move on to the introduction – your Home page.

Your home page needs to trumpet your USP, it simply needs to push your visitor to find out more and to drive them on to your services page.

The last and easiest page to write is your conclusion – you About Us page. Like any good conclusion, your About Us only needs to reiterate the USP you set out on your Home page, and backed up with evidence throughout your Services pages.

So, start with your Services, then write an introduction that builds up to them on your Home page, and then wrap it up with a concluding About Us.

Simple!