Introduction
Just like branding and design, your website copywriting is pivotal to the perception of your company. But if writing for the web is new to you, there are ways to tune up your copy to make the right first impressions on your audience. You may feel like a competent writer, and having a way with words is a good start, but there is a science to writing websites, and it all comes down to how your reader digests and interacts with the page.
In this post, I’ll run through five tips to help you improve your website copy including:
Better headlines
Best practices for word counts
Organising the flow of information
Writing search engine-friendly copy
Including calls to action
Why is website copy important?
It’s interesting to note a recent study showed that 74% of Millennials noticed poor spelling and grammar on websites. Yet it makes sense. Website copy is often the first impression of your brand and as such, it needs a legitimate, professional feel to inspire confidence.
Carefully, well-crafted copy will help you stand out, elevate your brand, communicate the right messages, and keep your audience engaged. And that type of person is more likely to convert into a customer. Let’s jump into some of the touchpoints that can help you make that happen.
# 1 Headlines matter
Quick website headline checklist:
Keep your headline benefit-focused and create an emotional pull. How do you solve your customer’s problems?
Don’t forget your ‘why’, AKA your reason for being, which ties into your mission.
If you can, test your headlines with your audience, or get together an informal focus group within your business to see what versions resonate.
Did you know that 8 out of 10 people only read headlines? It’s an important stat because these are the things that impact the effectiveness of your marketing touchpoints, including your website.
Part of advertising lore is that David Ogilvy (AKA ‘Father of Advertising’) put a lot of stock in good headlines. Why? Because he did his research and discovered that headlines were the driving force behind the success of his campaigns. In the world of the web, not much has changed in human psychology. Headlines are still the thing that commands the utmost attention.
Even an experienced copywriter can spend time sweating over these seemingly elusive words. If you’re not a copywriter or even if web writing isn’t your usual thing, you need a starting point. Understanding your key benefits, how you solve problems, and what that means emotionally to your audience is a tried and tested approach. So for instance, you might make beautiful cushions, but on an emotional level, you’re empowering people to create dream interiors.
Another jump-off point can be your Golden Circle. This is the idea that people don’t buy what you do, but rather why you do it. A good example of this is Apple, which leads with the ‘why’ behind their brand with ‘we think differently’. They could have just as easily said something about them making computers and phones, and with considerably less impact. Understanding your ‘why’ can help you position your brand and brainstorm some interesting, hard-hitting headlines for your website.
# 2 Think about copy length
Quick website copy length checklist:
Think about what your customer needs to know and write the copy to match.
Make sure you’re not being repetitive.
Add intriguing, impactful copy to onsite imagery.
Add alt text to images and videos.
Images, videos and copy all have a place on every website. Depending on your business, the amount of copy needed will vary. Even if your brand is more visual, copy will help your website’s visibility on search engines and guide your customer through their journey.
If you are adding a lot of visual elements to your website, don’t forget to add copy to the alt text, to help Google crawl the page. Retail often relies on high-converting imagery and video. Even in this case, there are ways to add copy to the pages to help with SEO, without ruining the aesthetic. Collapsible text is one example, and for a Homepage great, snappy headlines and subheadings that communicate clear messages can maximise impact.
Other landing pages, like your About page, Services, and Category pages will also vary depending on what information you need to get across. If you need to explain how your service works or key benefits, you probably need to say more, with 500 words being a rough SEO and human-eyeball-friendly amount. If you’re a retail business and it’s a Category page, around 100-200 words is often enough to help your SEO and provide some info for your customers.
For headlines, work to around six words for maximum impact. That said, some may be longer, especially if you’re setting up a landing page to convert customers.
# 3 Get your flow right
Quick web copy flow checklist:
Consider the reader’s journey and avoid repetition across or within pages: remember, every page has a unique purpose.
Start with an outline for your copy per page, then flesh it out.
Prioritise the information on the page, thinking about the placement of copy to suit the way our eyes move across it.
Get the most salient points across at the top, or ‘above the fold’.
Think about your website as a journey. A potential customer lands on one page and navigates through your site to search for information and research solutions to problems or wants and needs.
Categorising information on the right pages will create a flow that improves their experience. For example, on your About page, you probably don’t want to go into massive amounts of detail on your services, instead, that’s the place to tell your story.
When planning your website content, create a structure for each page, making sure to avoid repetition. Once you have a basic outline, you can start to flesh it out, adding the right content to draw the reader in.
It’s also worth knowing that our eyes move across web pages in a particular way. Various studies have shown that we read from the top left and down in a Z shape. So consider the way your copy is displayed on the page, like this best-in-class example from HubSpot below. Consider where your headlines are, your calls to action, and your main body copy. Prioritising the important information first or ‘above the fold’ is another thing to consider, so you can draw people before going into more detail.
# 4 Optimise your writing
Quick copy optimisation checklist:
Use organic keyword tools to choose the best keywords for your web pages.
Identify the best opportunities, with keywords you have a chance of ranking for and are relevant to your business or service.
Write for humans first, search engines second. Beautiful copy reigns.
Consider hiring an SEO Copywriter to nail this.
There is a lot of advice around optimising website copy for keywords to help SEO. It’s an in-depth, technically driven area of expertise which can be confusing when unfamiliar. On a basic level, you need to target relevant keywords across your website to help you compete on search engine rankings.
There are various ways to do this and some keyword tools even offer a free number of searches per day, like SEMrush, Moz and Ahrefs (note these are used for organic keywords, which are the types we want here, not paid keywords). If you’re writing for an entire website, it’s much easier to either upgrade to a paid version of these tools or ask an SEO copywriter to do it for you. The idea is to create a list of keywords relevant to your business and have a strategy across your website. So, in basic terms, each page will have selected keyword targets.
The benefit of this is that they can also identify the best opportunities, which means selecting keywords you have a chance of ranking for. Put it this way, some extremely competitive keywords will have big search numbers but you’ll rank so far down the list, that it won’t help your website climb the page.
Also remember that all copy should be written for humans first and search engines second. In the ‘old’ days, keyword stuffing was a strategy that worked. But now we know better. First, it sounds spammy and ruins the reader’s experience, and second, search engines will penalise you for it. So yes, you need keywords to compete out there, but you also need to relate to your human audience first and foremost.
# 5 Include calls to action … in the right places
Quick call-to-action checklist:
Make sure you include the right calls to action on your web pages and make them pop.
Use active language to compel your audience to click.
Think about the reader’s experience to gauge how many you need per page.
Remember how eyes move across your page.
When we talk about a call to action (or CTA), we mean prompting a reader to do something there and then, whether it’s to subscribe, buy, download a guide, or find out more (etc.) There has been a lot of research into effective CTAs, from testing different CTA variations (i.e. ‘find out more’ versus ‘buy now’) and you can always experiment with your own. Whatever you do, keep those CTAs strong and succinct, with action words that compel the reader to click.
Also, consider how many CTAs you need per page. Homepages might need more calls to action to direct people to their area of interest, while others may require just one, and adding more might only create confusion or dilute the message. Think like a customer to see what elevates their experience.
From a design perspective, putting your CTA as a button (rather than a hyperlink) can help your conversion rate, making this button pop with a visible colour. As we also know, the eyes move across the page in a certain way, so leverage this knowledge to your advantage. If you’re creating a landing page to convert customers, think about putting your call to action in the top left corner like the example above, with a snappy headline and some teaser website copy.
Wrapping up
Just like your website’s design and branding, your website copy needs to communicate the right messages to capture your audience’s attention and convert them into customers. Bad writing, dodgy flow of information, lack of keywords and poor headlines can all add up to a bad website experience, no matter how great it looks.
If you need expert advice, see how I can help you perfect your website copywriting and engage your readers throughout their journey.