7 Tips on Writing Great Copy for Your Small Business Website

[This article was written by Kristin Savage.]

Your website’s copy plays an important role in your business’s success. One of the best ways to convince people to trust your small business and try out your service is through a convincing copy. A professional and credible website is what people expect from a reliable business. That’s why you need great copy that will serve as proof of your credibility and trustworthiness.

The challenging part of writing a great copy is finding the right approach. Writing can seem like a simple task but in fact, it demands strategy and preparedness. With the following tips, you’ll know the crucial ingredients of a convincing website copy. Let’s get started!

1. Identify Your Target Customers

Personalized copy always performs better than a generic one. Knowing who you are writing for will help you adapt to their language style and interest. The information you collect about your target customers will allow you to create a customized copy.

Google Analytics is a tool that can show you some basic information about your customers. Use it to analyze your current customers. Social media is also a good place for getting to know your target audience. Look into your competitors’ followers, their comments, the language they use, etc.

If you want to pull out information such as the audience’s demographic, engagement, and other from social media, there is a solution. Use analytics features of social media such as Facebook Insights or Instagram Insights.

2. Use Compelling Headlines

A good headline is what draws readers in. The headlines can come in the form of questions or statements. For example, your “About Us” page can have a headline “Who are we?” or “How it all started…”.

Ask yourself if you were a reader what would compel you to keep reading? The headlines need to spark people’s imagination and lead them towards finding the answers to their questions. That is, the headlines need to be clear, direct, and interesting.

3. Avoid Formality

Use “we”, “us”, “our” when talking about your company and “you” when referring to the audience. You want to build trust in website visitor and stiffness and formality won’t help you with that.

The atmosphere you want to evoke with your content is friendly and approachable. A closer connection between the business and its customers is the advantage that small businesses have over big corporations. You should emphasize that in your copy.

4. Use Everyday Language

Formal wording, industry jargon, and complex phrases will turn away many potential customers. If people can’t understand what you are saying, how do you expect them to buy your products? They definitely won’t be looking into the dictionary to decipher your copy.

Your website copy should be written in simple, everyday language that everyone can understand. Their educational background or occupation shouldn’t be an issue. Use the Flesch-Kincaid readability test as a measure of readability. Aim for 60-70 score as that means that the copy is written in plain language. If you can’t manage to edit your copy to make it more readable you can hire a writing service such as TrustMyPaper to help you out.

5. Have a Consistent Style and Structure

The format in which you present the copy is very important. Long paragraphs and crazy fonts will distract the readers or bore them in a second. That’s why you need to pay extra attention to the copy’s style and structure.

Here are some characteristics of a readable and structured copy:

• Short sentences
• Short paragraphs (up to 4 sentences)
• Headlines
• Subheadings
• Bulleted or numbered lists
• Images that break up the copy
• Consistent font style
• Consistent font size

6. Optimize the Content

To improve your search results score you shouldn’t forget about SEO. Consider including some relevant keywords in your copy, adding valuable links, and CTAs. Just keep in mind that all SEO elements need to be naturally embedded in the copy.

Optimization can lead potential customers to your website. That’s the reason why writing a website copy and SEO are inseparable.

7. Keep It Short and Simple

If you think that you have to go overboard to impress your customers, you’re wrong. The goal of the website copy is to deliver the necessary information. Therefore, you won’t win the people over with extravagant content, you will convince them to trust you with simplicity.

Define the aims of your website. For example, you want to introduce your business, present your service, and provide contact information. Focus your writing on delivering that information and that’s it.

Final Thoughts

Targeted, simple, engaging, and informative are the main features that your copy needs to embody. Try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and then create content accordingly.

A great website copy has become a necessity considering that most people do online research for the service they need. That’s why you should stick to these tips and start working on the winning copy that will bring you new customers.

Author Bio:

Kristin Savage is an experienced copywriter. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. Besides working as a copywriter at GrabMyEssay she also does some editing work. In her free time, Kristin likes to travel and explore new countries around the world.