Rocket science and business web copywriting are completely different entities – i.e. writing passably good web copy is not that hard, once you know how. Our ‘How To’ web copy seminars for business will take your team through it all.

Business web copy has to grab prospects immediately, hooking them straight onto a sales path and driving them to take the action that will lead to an enquiry or a sale.

So web words must be carefully crafted.

The fact that many companies often overlook their written content when they’re developing a new site – finishing it in a hurry at the end of the whole process – illustrates only too clearly that many people just do not realise the potential power of good web copy.

In pre-internet days it was common to describe a professional copywriter as ‘a salesperson behind a typewriter’.

In these internet times this is still a good description, except to say that website copy brings new challenges and is much harder to write well.

Our Best Words ‘How To Write Web Copy’ seminar takes the audience through the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of website copywriting, helping them evaluate the effectiveness of their existing copy by identifying the most important aspects of style and strategy.

BEFORE you write, you must look at:

• Your audience. Feel their pain and know how you can cure it.
• Your USP. And yes, you DO have one, even if it’s currently hiding under the bed.
• The features and benefits of your products or services. 
• How you might sell the major benefits.
• The desired navigation paths of your site. Which people do you want to go where, and what do you want them to do?
• What you need to be found for – ideal keywords,  key landing pages and some ideas for SEO.

Tips for WHAT you write:

• Compose compelling benefit-led headlines as hooks into your copy.
• Develop interest with  a promise – why should they read on?
• Sell benefits through a logical sequence or story to create desire.
• Be a devil’s advocate – know the counter-arguments and be prepared to cite them.
• Provide proof or credibility (case studies, facts, testimonials etc).
• Call the particular prospects to  particular actions. Have a call to action on every page.  
• Weave relevant page keywords into your copy.

Tips for HOW you write:

• Make your writing  invisible. Readers should visualise and desire the product or service, not be distracted by your words.
• Write in the grammatical (not editorial) style of a tabloid  journalist, rather than a broadsheet journalist.
• Keep your sentence structure  simple – subject/verb/object. Not always, but as a general rule.
• Show rather than tell.  Value verbs over adjectives or adverbs.
• Revise, revise, revise your writing – then revise.

I hope you found these few ideas useful. We have been teaching copywriting to businesses for ten years now – we’re wary of the term ‘expert’ – but we certainly do know what we’re doing.

If you’re looking to upskill your team in web copy and how to write it, get in touch and we will arrange a full day or half day seminar – at your premises or ours: 01582 761 212

Doug