5 Tips for Great Website Copy
How do you write great website copy?
This is a question that keeps my clients up at night. How do I write great website copy? What does great website copy look like? Could my website copy be better?
Great website copy comprises of three things: clear brand voice, great SEO, and high engagement.
Answer these 3 questions:
Are your customers engaging with your website? (Are they staying on the site for more than a minute? Clicking through the site?)
Are you getting organic search traffic? (i.e. traffic to your site through unpaid search engine results?)
Do you have a high conversion rate on your site for your desired call to action? Meaning, that out of all the visitors to your site, how many complete the action that you want them to do? (i.e. How many visitors buy the course // schedule a meeting // input their email for a free offer?)
If your answer is a resounding YES!!! to all of these questions - then you have GREAT website copy. If your answer is “no” or “maybe?” to any of these questions then this is the blog for you. Read on for 5 tips to improve your website copy.
1. Know Your Audience
You won’t get anywhere with your website copy if you don’t have a clear understanding of exactly who you’re talking to. That’s why knowing and understanding your audience - AKA your ideal customer - is crucial!
I always suggest before writing or updating your website copy - do an audience inventory. Get clear on your ideal customer demographics and psychographics. If your business has grown or changed over the years, your ideal customer market might have changed with it.
Keep in mind these questions to answer about your ideal audience because they will inform your website copywriting:
Who exactly am I talking to?
What are their likes/dislikes?
What are their hopes/dreams/desires?
What are they searching on Google? / What are they looking for?
What type of pain points is ___ feeling that my brand/product/service solves?
What type of tone would ___ respond to most?
Do they enjoy direct, blunt writing? Sassy, fun writing? Sarcastic writing? Empowering writing?
There are lots of tools for doing audience research. You can always start simple and send out an in-depth questionnaire to your current customers with questions about demographics and psychographics. If you have a close customer base such as in the coaching niche, this is a great place to start.
If you have a larger customer base then using a tool like Semrush, Google Analytics, or Qualtrics are also great options. Also doing geographic mapping with a company like Geospatial Habits is a great idea and can be a game-changer.
2. Have a Clear Brand Voice
Now that you have a clear understanding of your audience, you can do an audit of your branding, specifically your brand voice. Brand voice is everything when it comes to copywriting, especially for your website. If you don’t have a clear voice, it’s hard to know what to write! A clear brand voice that engages your customers and builds trust is everything for a brand and can drive all the copywriting you do.
So let’s dive in!
A brand isn’t just about what your company delivers. There’s more that goes into creating a dream brand:
Brand = creator/mission + audience + deliverable
Your brand is made up of the creator and the mission behind it + your ideal audience + your deliverable. A lot of entrepreneurs think their brand is them and their deliverable - which is true to an extent. But your brand is also the answer to your customer’s prayers, so you can’t forget the customer aspect of your brand. Your brand is a creation powered by a mission, a connection to its audience, and a deliverable for that audience.
Now that we have a clear look at what comprises a brand, we need to think about brand voice. A brand’s voice is what brings a brand to life - giving it a specific personality and trustworthiness to its customers. Think about your favorite brands - what kind of language do they use? What kind of tone? What do they talk about?
Great brands have a specific voice, a specific entity - almost like a book character! A being that comes to life on its own because of the brand voice. It should have likes, dislikes, needs, desires, and wants that align with your ideal customers.
Thus, the brand voice makes up the personality of the brand. It gives a voice to the brand that customers get to know and trust. Your brand should be the answer to your customer’s prayers. So your brand voice has to appeal to those customers tonally.
I like to tell clients working on their brand voice to journal about the below:
Brand Mission & Values
Ideal Customer Values
Current Content Pillars
Content that customers respond positively to.
What language are you using and what tone(s) are you using that customers respond positively to?
Combine
Utilize your research to create a brand tagline that will inform all of your writing:
I help ___ with ___ by providing ___.
If you need more help with brand voice - get my free brand voice guide by signing up for my email list!
3. Do SEO Keyword Research
What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
At the very basic level, Google wants to provide the best resources to its users. So what does that mean for you? You need to prove to Google that you provide the best resources to your ideal audience. Then Google will connect you with that audience.
This means you provide valuable and reliable information on your website that your ideal customer needs - more than 1,000 words on pages, clear meta descriptions, keywords that match up with your ideal audience in headings and body text, and compelling copy so the audience stays on your page, and backlinks - just to name a few things.
A great place to start is utilizing Ubersuggest’s site audit to get a better understanding of the SEO of your website. Then you’re going to want to add more in-depth keyword research into your copywriting.
Keyword Research
Keyword research comes down to the question - what are your ideal clients googling and do you have that information on your website?
For example, you’re an elopement photographer on the East Coast. You have “elopement photographer” on your website, but you don’t have “East Coast elopement photographer”.
You might use an SEO keyword search tool like Ubersuggest to look up “East Coast elopement photographer” and you see top searches related to this are “East Coast elopement planning”, “New England elopement photographer”, and “East Coast elopement photography packages”. These are all keywords and long-tail keywords that you can add to your website in headings and body text.
Check out the below sites to start doing SEO keyword research that you can integrate into your website copywriting:
If you want more help with SEO keyword research, sign up for my email list where I share helpful tips!
4. Add Helpful Homepage Subsections
Your homepage is often the first place your customers see when clicking on your website, so you want to make it as clear and understandable as possible. In a recent Komarketing study:
“86% of people want to see product and service information on a website homepage”
and
“46% of users reported ‘lack of message’ as the main reason they leave websites”
So it’s more important than ever to have a website (especially a homepage) that has a clear message and call to action!
What goes into a website homepage?
When I’m writing website homepages, I like to separate them into subsections. This helps the writing process because it keeps customers interested with concise writing and entertaining sections, ultimately resulting in increased customer engagement and trust-building.
See the below subsections I like to use when writing homepages:
1. Welcome Section
Your homepage should start with a “welcome section” where you’re quite literally welcoming your ideal customer to your website. This means you’re introducing your company and what you offer right off the bat, as well as addressing any pain points your ideal customer has.
You want your ideal customer to feel like:
“wow this is exactly what I’ve been looking for”
“wow they’re taking the words right out of my mouth”
“wow this is exactly how I feel”
2. Credentials Section
This is a pretty simple part of the homepage but it’s good to add in some sort of credentials right away to prove your brand’s authority in the space. Featured in Forbes? Add that graphic and detail here. Have some exciting statistics to share? Add that here.
3. Testimonials
People love reviews - they’re a great way to build trust fast! I like to have these after the welcome and credentials sections because they often prove the point of how you’re the solution for your audience. After all, you’ve successfully helped so many others like them.
4. Process Breakdown
It’s important to break down what you offer clearly so your ideal customer has a good idea of what it looks like to work with you/buy from you/hire you etc.
Your “process breakdown” could be anything! It just needs to provide clarity on some of the next steps on the customer journey when they work with you (and why they should!) You can even break down relevant concepts in the process breakdown.
5. Short About
It’s always important to have an about section on your homepage. I call it the “Short About” because it should just be a bio and a picture (and potentially a trust-building quote!). Most companies also have a more expansive “About” website page so you don’t need too much information in this section of the homepage.
6. Services Overview
You should also include a quick services overview on your homepage. This can be a brief look at the services you offer, the packages you offer, the courses you offer, etc. It should have the title of the offers you have as well as a brief explanation for each. You can also link to the sales page for each service.
7. FAQs
You want to answer frequently asked questions on your homepage. These can be huge for customer trust building and also great for SEO!
8. Plug freebies
At the bottom of your homepage, it’s always helpful to do that last engagement grab by showcasing the free offers you have - got a free ebook or some sort of free lesson? Showcase it here.
5. Add an Opt-in Offer
Opt-ins are a great way to boost customer engagement and start customers down your sales funnel but collecting emails. I suggest creating some sort of free offer that you can showcase on your website for people to “opt-in” to receive by giving you their emails. You can have various free offers on your site and you can also feature choice offers as pop-ups.
There are so many pros about opt-in offers:
Help you start to build a trusting relationship with your ideal customer by offering something free.
Get your ideal customer into your email funnel where you can nurture them with emails so that they’re more likely to buy in the future.
Start establishing a customer relationship.
Examples: offer discounts, a free ebook, a free masterclass lesson, or another form of free value
You can even feature purchasable offers as well. It’s really up to you!
Great Website Copy Awaits
I know, I know, writing website copy can feel really overwhelming. But take it one step at a time with these tips and you will see great results.
If you’re ready to take the next step to having incredible website copy, let’s get you started! Want free templates for great homepage copy and brand voice? Sign up for my email list!
