SEM Rush’s 2022 State of Content Marketing report indicated that 40% of the brands surveyed said they outsource copywriting. If you are in the 60% wanting to create better marketing copy, we can help.
Marketing web copy has the power to distinguish between a visitor and a lead. It is a vital part of the consumer journey at all stages of the buying cycle—from awareness to decision-making and advocacy.
Below, tips for writing compelling copy.
What is website copywriting?
Website copywriting is writing content—blog posts, landing pages, product pages, etc.—that encourages a website visitor to take a specific action. Good website copywriting can convert visitors into leads and leads into customers.
The role of web copy is varied and nuanced, but most marketers know bad when they see it. Why? Because bad web copy isn’t smooth reading, doesn’t evoke emotion, doesn’t compel action, and doesn’t explicitly ask for action.
It so feels pointless—and that is precisely the opposite of the thing to be done by marketing.”
But web copywriting is a tactic that more often than not gets neglected in favor of other website aspects such as SEO, design, and functionality.
Tips for Writing Website Copy That Converts—13 Tips
Know your audience.
Figure out the why.
Complexity kills readability.
Be concise.
Write how you speak.
Take breaks between drafts.
Break up the copy.
Avoid overuse of buzzwords.
Focus on benefits.
Don’t overlook microcopy.
Check out the competition.
Know your audience.
The top tip for copywriting your website is to get clear on who your audience is. If you don’t have a particular reader—or readers—in mind, how will you know what words and tone resonate best with them?
As a writer, I consistently consider the user’s needs. This serves as my guiding principle when I compose posts. How did I get to know them? Using user personas and data.
User personas will tell you who the average reader coming on my article is, what their pain points and challenges are, and their goals. The data will tell you what has worked well with that audience and the strategies to avoid.
With both, you’ll understand your audience better so you can write copy that’ll engage and compel your user to act.
Figure out the why.
You’ve been handed a specific piece of copy on the company website to write.
After knowing your audience, a HubSpot marketer recommends that you ask yourself, who cares?
“I don’t want to write something that I can’t say why someone should read,” said Curtis del Principe, an SEO content writer at HubSpot. “Once I know who cares (and why), I have an angle and a through line to write.”
We write too frequently without shaking the dust off the why behind the piece. What will the reader get out of this? What do I want them to do after reading this? Why should they care about this content?
These questions need to be answered before you start writing valuable content.
Complexity kills readability.
Recently, SEMrush studied more than 23,561 texts featured in Google’s top 10 results. They discovered that the lowest-scoring texts shared two traits in common: they were either too long or too complex.
Indeed, 41% of the low-scoring texts employed overly complex words.
Take this as your cue to ditch the jargon and the big words; just go straight to the point. Here are a few examples:
Helpful vs. Beneficial
Use vs. Utilize
Happen vs. Occur
Test vs. Examine
When in doubt, simplify.
Be concise.
As Nobel Prize winner and writer William Faulkner put it: Kill your darlings.
Sitting down with a writer’s mind makes it easy for our words to escape our control. On the other hand, excessive language in marketing has the opposite effect.
AJ Beltis, the senior marketing manager at HubSpot who manages blog leads, describes himself as a wordy writer. So, he focuses on brevity.
“When I write something for the first time, I put all of my ideas on the paper. Then I will review it again, and I will ask myself, “How can I say this more succinctly?” he says. “Because of that, I feel I’m able to say what I want to say more clearly and quickly.”
This is echoed by Madison Z. Vettorino, who recommends that brands go for “bite-sized” copy with accuracy and authenticity intact.
“Everything you write, every word, every sentence has to lead back to that central idea. If it doesn’t, it’s extraneous and needs to be cut,” she says. “Being able to read copy and keep it short with impact is a superpower when it comes to copywriting.”
Write how you speak.
This one feels like a no-brainer but is the largest roadblock to copywriters.
We tend to believe that our readers speak in more elegant language than we do. But the reality is that most readers need to be spoken to as if they’re a friend.
Readers get a taste of your personality, and it’s more relatable and conversational,” says HubSpot staff writer Alana Chinn. “Also, it’s waaaay easier to write about complex topics when you consider how you would explain them to a friend or a loved one in real life.”
Take breaks between drafts.
Mengumpulkan it twice, however, becomes difficult to spot errors when you’ve been working on something for a while
To counter this, spend plenty of time between edits, says HubSpot staff writer Madhu Murali.
“This hits me with a sort of fresh perspective on the piece every time I read it and gives me a clearer notion of a reader’s POV,” he says.
When you read it again, you’ll probably be able to see clumsy sentences, awkward phrasing, and grammatical errors better. Using this methodology will transform good copy into great copy.
Break up the copy.
If your copy is long and bulky, it doesn’t matter how good it is; you are most likely going to lose your reader’s interest.
Eye-tracking studies show that website visitors read very little of an article, bouncing around instead of reading every word. As a result, avoid long blocks of text—and do it if your readership is primarily on mobile.
This can also be done with subheaders, bullet points, and images—as seen in the example below.
Avoid overuse of buzzwords.
Once I landed on a website and read so many buzzwords that I didn’t understand what they said. I tried to reread sentences for a few minutes to make sense of them and got nowhere.
I became discouraged and left the site.
Typically the intent when using buzzwords is to use words likely to grab a reader’s attention. Sometimes people get a bit too carried away, and you end up with a sentence that goes around the globe but has no context.
In this case, less is more. So make your copy simple and free of jargon—unless you have data saying it works for your audience.
Focus on benefits.
As simple as it sounds, many companies never take this concept and pull that into their web copy.
They write about what their business does and what products they sell, rather than from the reader’s point of view. How can they benefit from using your software? Start from there.
So, rather than saying, “We do inbound marketing,” for example, say something like, “Increase your web traffic and leads through engaging content,” so readers know instantly what the benefits are.
Don’t overlook microcopy.
Microcopy is short text on a website, like a call to action and the name of a field in a form.
The copy never comes up in conversation, but it’s these little details that make or break the user experience of your site.
Easier said than done, right? We know.
Here are a handful of guarantees for writing a strong CTA:
Use action verbs—use words like “discover” and “join” rather than generic phrases like “click here” and “learn more.”
Make them stick—If you know that your audience is looking for community, you can include this in your CTA as “Join a community of 1000+ marketers.”
Evoke urgency and scarcity—words such as “limited,” “act now,” and “while it lasts” can trigger action from consumers who don’t want to lose out.
Check out the competition.
Always useful to see what your competition is doing, right… this can help inform your own strategy. Copywriting is no different.
Visit the websites of your direct competitors and pay attention to their copy. What’s their tone? How do they market products and services to consumers? What call-to-actions are they using (and on what pages) to get people through to the bottom of the funnel?
While I’m not advocating for copy that aligns with their perspective, it’s beneficial to understand their point of view.
Now that you have all of these tips, you can elevate your copywriting game and start boosting those conversions.
This post was first published in March 2015 and has been updated for accuracy.
