People often get caught up with the design of a website and often forget the wider picture – they want it to look top notch but don’t stop to think about the actual content, “We’ll sort that bit out later” they say. However, a brilliantly designed and thought out website isn’t a great one unless the copy has been thought about – it is your chance to speak directly to your target audience.

Writing copy for a website is quite a delicate balance, you want to engage your readers but it still has to be effective for SEO purposes i.e. keyword rich. This balance can often be difficult to gauge as often text jam-packed full of keywords reads very oddly. Your copy has to have two hats and you must write for both the visitor to the site to persuade them to follow the user journey and hopefully lead to a sale and also for the search engine so your rankings are high. And the challenge is to do this without putting either of them off.

There are a few pointers to take when writing copy for your website. Your visitors will be impatient when browsing your site so make sure you consciously do something about it – engaging copy is precisely the way to go about it. But how can you do this?

1. Keep it simple. Visitors to your website do not want to be reading lengthy copy, make it easy to scan through and bold the most important points so any visitors can grasp the gist by skimming over the text.
2. Outline your services. Make sure you are really clear about what you offer as a company, if you only have 30 seconds to impress you need to make sure your visitors really are impressed!
3. Make it interesting. Boring copy makes people sleepy – and they’ll just go find another website that can do the same job.
4. Make sure you’re believable. If you’re not going to be able to deliver a promise in the long run definitely don’t say it.

It might sound great in theory but there will be some pages where heavy text is essential. In this case make sure you revise the text thoroughly ensuring that there is no waffle and use subheadings and shorter paragraphs.

Copy really can add a little bit of spice to any product you’re selling so don’t be afraid to use a light tone even if you are writing for an engineering website. The main thing is that it appeals to the people you are writing for, being creative is never a bad thing – just make sure you don’t go over the top.

And finally, the golden rule. Consistency. Use the same tone throughout your website – don’t confuse your readers.

Copy is the icing on top of your website and without great icing your website just won’t quite deliver the same results. Hopefully this article has highlighted why you need to think carefully about your copies, and teamed with a superbly designed website there will be conversions flying in from all over the shop.

About the Author
Rebecca Field is writing on behalf of BigFork, a Norwich Web Design company, they specialise in building websites using their bespoke CMS, giving the user essential control over their website’s appearance and features.