A well-written website builds brand awareness, credibility and trust. It answers your customers' questions, showcases your products, services and expertise, and positions your business as unique in your marketplace. A poorly-written website delivers the opposite, and visitors will click away from your site as quickly as they arrived if they don't get a top-class user experience.
This article explains how an experienced web copywriter (also known as an SEO copywriter) can make your company's site work harder. It covers the obvious benefits of hiring professional copywriting services and some of the less obvious advantages that a seasoned SEO copywriter can bring.
Putting your customers first
Businesses often struggle to look at their website from the outside. People within the company deeply understand what they offer and how the organisation operates. However, they don't necessarily know how to communicate effectively with their target audience.
A web copywriter will take a visitor-centric approach to crafting your website. They will:
Answer critical questions – those that can make or break a sale.
Describe product and service benefits instead of reeling off meaningless features and business credentials.
Clearly define and address the customer's pain points.
Persuade potential customers to take specific actions on your site that move them through the sales funnel.
Think about it. When you visit a website, do you want to hear 20 reasons why the company or product you're reading about is so amazing or learn how the product or service can help you?
I imagine you would choose the latter.
Yes, there's a place for sharing your credibility — the 'About Us' page — but most of all, people want to feel as though they are your priority when they visit your website.
Targeting and tone
Speaking of target audiences, have you identified yours?
Businesses often come to us with a general idea of their target audience(s), but it needs to be clearly defined. What information does each audience need from you to push them along the sales pipeline? How do they want you to communicate? In a formal tone? With humour? With empathy? What types of content will engage them?
A website copywriter will help you:
Define and understand your audiences using buyer personas.
Develop a brand voice that speaks to your potential customers using relatable language.
Brand trust
People who visit your website need reassurance that your products or services meet their needs and expectations. Website copywriters use two techniques to achieve this:
Answering customer questions and concerns
Social proof.
Answering customer questions and concerns
Unanswered questions can lead to mistrust and annoyance. If a customer can't find the answers they are looking for and find them quickly, they will head into the arms of a competitor.
A web copywriter will work with you to establish all the common questions, concerns and objections your customers have at every stage of the buyer journey. They will also research online search terms related to your products and services, as this provides crucial insight into your ideal customer's pain points.
More often than not, a seasoned copywriter will uncover questions that you hadn't considered. They will build the answers to these questions into your web pages, making them easy to find and creating a positive user experience.
Social proof
Testimonials can be valuable for building trust but must be chosen wisely. It can be better to have none than to have ones that say nothing about how your service benefitted the customer. You know — the empty comments like, 'Full Height Copy is amazing' or 'Full Height Copy is great to work with'. These statements tell the visitor nothing about why you're a cut above the competition.
A copywriter will seek concise testimonials that demonstrate how you helped the customer or why your product is the business. They may also propose interviewing your customers to produce solid written or video-based case studies.
Placement is critical, too. A copywriter will know the best places to display social proof on your website for maximum impact.
Understanding of online reading behaviours
A study by Nielsen Norman Group looked back at findings from a series of eye-tracking studies over 13 years and found that fundamental scanning behaviours remain constant, even as designs change. Digital copywriters are aware of these trends in online reading behaviour and have a sound grasp of writing techniques and layout formats that appeal to them. They will work with your web designer to ensure that your site is as readable as it is aesthetic.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Your shiny new website will only rank well in organic search engine results pages if it keeps search engines' ever-evolving algorithms happy. Achieving this requires a robust SEO strategy with high-quality content at the heart of it.
An SEO copywriter will write thought-leader quality content and optimise each web page to make it search engine-friendly. A copywriting agency may even have an SEO team who can manage all aspects of your SEO for you.
Conversion optimisation
Website copywriters have a strong understanding of website psychology. When visitors land on your site, they subconsciously scan the pages and look for cues indicating how to interact with it. You have complete control of the environment and how the reader naturally moves through it. This is where many websites fail. Your visitors actually want a clear sales pathway. If navigation is unclear, it becomes a frustrating user experience.
A successful website is an engineered space that drives conversions. Copywriters are skilled at achieving this with conversion copywriting. They pair writing techniques that engage and persuade the reader with a strategically placed call to action (CTA) that encourages a desired consumer action. The CTA can take the form of a clickable button, image or text.
The action you want the visitor to take will depend on the nature of your business and which stage of the sales funnel the web page is targeting. Typical CTAs include inviting users to download software, subscribe to a newsletter, make an online purchase or contact the sales team.
Localisation
Have you ever watched TV commercials when abroad and thought to yourself, who would buy anything with that kind of advertising?
Marketing approaches vary hugely between countries, as does language usage. If you're reaching out to a market in another country, you'd be wise to hire a copywriter that is native to that country. A lot of global organisations get this one wrong. It's not simply about the nuances of language; it's also about getting the cultural meaning right.
Cost-effectiveness
Small businesses and non-profits often tackle their web copy in-house in an effort to save money. But this is often counterproductive. If you have someone in your team who has a way with words, this might work well enough for you, but copywriting is a specialist skill. SEO copywriting is even more so. When you hire a professional copywriter, you're investing in someone who understands the art of commercial writing and can execute highly effective copy quickly.
Useful contacts
Businesses that need a web copywriter also need the support of other creative and marketing professionals such as SEO, PPC and PR agencies; web designers and developers; photographers; videographers; and illustrators.
Any well-established web copywriting agency will have these tried and tested contacts and will be happy to make introductions. You may even get a discount on partner services.
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