November 07, 2017

4 Ways to Spruce Up Your Website Copy

What are some of the items you might find on a checklist of website improvements? You’ll probably see some very technical, backend things in there. You’ll probably see a task to check different hosting options if the existing one is starting to cause troubles. And there are things like website navigation, page layouts, and other design elements that can have quite an effect on your website and need to be periodically improved.
4 Ways to Spruce Up Your Website Copy: eAskme
4 Ways to Spruce Up Your Website Copy: eAskme
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Website copy should be there, as well. The words you use to communicate with the customers, clients, and anyone else who happens upon your website count for a lot. And if your words aren’t good, the impression your website leaves won't be either.

Think About the Purpose of the Copy

Different copy serves different purposes. Blog posts are written to provide information, intrigue, or entertain, as well as increase the visibility of the website in search engine results. Landing page copy is written to maximize conversion rates. Calls-to-action are written to influence people into performing a specific action. "About us" sections are written to provide information about a business and humanize it. The list goes on and on.

Because different copy serves different purposes, it should be written in different ways that help it perform the best. Blog posts have writing rules of their own, just as landing page copy uses its own formulas. It’s very important that the style, wording, and tone of writing match its purpose.

It’s All About the Customer

The copy on your website isn’t there for you to read it, it’s there so that it can speak on your behalf to your customers, clients, or website visitors. The copy on your website isn’t about you, even when it is. It’s not even that much about the products or services you offer. It’s about the people who are reading it, your customers.

A customer-centric approach isn’t a huge unknown in writing. Writers write for audiences, as do journalists, speechwriters, screenwriters, and so on. If you want to write copy that tells your customers that it’s all about them, you need to do a couple of things. You need to find out who your customers are. You need to identify the problems they have that you can address. And finally, you want to speak to them the way they speak.

But Search Engines Also Matter

While you’re writing with your customers in mind, you should also know that, often enough, the thing that will help place your copy in front of your customers is an algorithm. A search engine algorithm, to be precise. So you’ll also want to have the search engines in mind when writing copy.
The problem with search engines is that no one knows exactly how they work. Writing search engine friendly copy is part following the guidelines issued by search engines themselves, and part gathering the best practices figured out by the SEO community. If you want your website to perform well in search engine results, writing appropriate copy is one of the ways to make it happen.

Use Multimedia Elements to Improve and Accentuate Your Copy

It doesn’t matter whether a picture is worth a thousand words or not — if used well, it can do wonders for your website and your copy. And using images and other media well isn’t as simple as it seems.

Simply adding more photos or other media will not do the trick. In fact, it will have the opposite effect — the eye-candy that are photos, lauded for their ability to attract people’s attention and tell stories in a glance, actually performs exactly the opposite of what you’d expect it. But there are still ways to use photos to accentuate the copy on your website, including adding photos that guide the users gaze, or that humanize the copy (very important for testimonials and about us pages), or simple relevant photos that you’ll leverage for their caption space.

Bonus Tip — Don’t Trip Over the Little Things

In writing, small things count for a lot. It only takes one spelling error and all the authority and trust you’ve built with your copy will start to crumble. So yes, it’s important to match the copy with its purpose. And it’s also important to write for an audience while knowing that the search engines will take a look at your copy as well. And pictures can help if you know how to use them. But none of that will matter if your copy is riddled with mistakes, bad data, or bad writing. So while you’re improving the copy on your website, make sure that you also take care of all the basics as well