Copy is what delays a web project the most and what most decides whether it converts. You do not need to be a copywriter: you need to answer, in writing, six questions you already answer from memory when a customer calls.
Copy is, by a distance, what delays a web project the most. The design gets approved, development moves along, and the site sits for three months waiting for someone to write what the services page says. It is also what most determines whether the site converts.
The good news: you do not need to be a copywriter. You need to answer, in writing, six questions you already answer from memory whenever a customer calls.
Write the way you speak
The number one mistake is switching register when writing. On the phone you say "we do the installation and give you a year of warranty", and on the site it comes out as "we provide integral solutions oriented towards excellence". The second one says nothing.
Practical trick: record yourself explaining your service to a friend, transcribe it and tidy it up. It will come out better than any attempt to sound corporate.
The six questions
Answer these six in a document, without worrying about the writing. That gives you 80% of the site's content:
- What exactly do you do, in one sentence someone outside your industry would understand?
- For whom? The more specific the better: "dental clinics in the Central Valley" converts better than "companies".
- What problem do you solve? In the customer's words, not yours.
- Why you and not the one next door? "We reply the same day" counts: specific wins.
- What is it like to work with you, step by step, from first contact to delivery?
- What do you want the person to do when they finish reading?
Benefits before features
"Sites built in Next.js" is a feature and it says nothing to your customer. "Your site loads in under two seconds, which is what decides whether anyone stays" is the same fact told from the buyer's side.
Simple rule: after each feature, mentally add "...which means that..." and write what follows. What follows is the text that goes on the site.
Write to be scanned
Nobody reads a web page straight through: they scroll fast until they find something that matters. Copy has to survive that skimming.
- Paragraphs of three or four lines at most.
- Subheadings every two or three paragraphs, each saying something on its own.
- Lists for enumerations. They get read; long blocks do not.
- Most important first. If the visitor only reads the first screen, that has to be enough.
Keywords, without forcing them
It does matter that a service page uses the words people search with, including the city or country when the business is local. But repeating "web design Costa Rica" fourteen times stopped working years ago and reads terribly on top of that.
The right way: one page per service, each written naturally around its own subject. If the text is well written for a person, the keywords show up by themselves.
Mistakes that cost enquiries
- Opening with "Welcome to our website". It is the most visible line on the page and it communicates nothing.
- Talking only about yourself. Describe the customer's problem before your track record.
- A single contact button, at the very bottom. Put the exit wherever you finish making a point.
- Industry jargon left untranslated.
- Promising what you do not deliver. It gets paid for with a one-star review.
When to delegate it
If you answered the six questions and still cannot get going, delegate. A copywriter takes your answers and turns them into the site's pages, and it usually costs less than having the project stalled for two months.
When we work with clients who have no time to write, that is exactly what we do: a one-hour interview, and out of it come the texts for you to review. Content should never be what holds a site back from launching.
Want us to review your site or build a new one?
