WRITING THE WORDS FOR YOUR WEBSITE
Great News! It’s actually very easy to write good text for your website. You just need to follow a few simple rules:
- 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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) - 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!)