How to write better website copy
I wrote this post a while back. The content can still be relevant but the information I've linked to may not be available.
Would you like your website to perform better? Do you want people to buy more of your product from it? or attract a higher number of sales leads? Whatever the objectives that you have for your website, it would be unusual if you did not want it to be more effective.
One way that you can improve your website is to write better copy. There's quite a skill to writing great website copy and it's something that many businesses overlook. Effective copywriting can persuade people to buy from you, improve the readability of your website, and deliver more for your business. I must admit that I have not thought about this subject enough but I was persuaded that I should learn more by Relly Annett-Baker who gave a presentation at the Bamboo Juice web conference earlier this year.
Of course, if you have a responsibility for managing or writing website copy, you can hire a copywriter and I would enourage you to consider this. At the same time, as a freelancer, I would like to learn more about this area myself. That's where Write To Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting by Andy Maslen will help. It's a guide to better copywriting and it contains a wealth of tips and tricks that will start you on the road to better copywriting. I'm enjoying reading it at the moment (and it makes a nice change from the CSS books that I normally read!)
Thanks to Relly Annett-Baker on Twitter for suggesting the book to me.
Comments
13 Nov 2009 09:03:46
I find writing copy for a website is always one of the biggest and most time consuming challenges of web design, and can take as much consideration as the design itself.
Obviously we all know that just writing out endless paragraphs of copy is comparatively useless if it is just waffle; the copy needs to be well structured and optimised to SEO standards.
Any guides to writing better copy would be good investments I think, as a return of investment in website traffic would more than cover the price many times over. I’ll be looking into this and similar books and seeing what is available out there.
13 Nov 2009 13:36:21
Nice article Clive. I’ve had ‘Write To Sell’ on my wish list at Amazon since you first mentioned it on Twitter. I’m very tempted to go for it as it is only £6.49 at the moment which does seem a bit of a bargain! Thanks :)
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