Why your website is still not finished
In our experience the single most common reason a website sits half built for months is not budget or design. It is a quote that said "client to supply content", and eight blank pages waiting for someone who runs a business all day.
If that is you, this is not a discipline problem. Writing about yourself is genuinely hard, and staring at an empty page is the worst possible starting point.
The method: talk it, then tidy it
You already know exactly what to say. You say it every week on the phone to customers. The trick is capturing that rather than trying to compose.
- Open the voice recorder on your phone.
- Imagine a customer has just asked you a question, and answer it out loud, exactly as you would on a call
- Do one question at a time. Two minutes each is plenty
- Get it transcribed. Most phones do this now, or type it up while playing it back
- Cut the ums and tidy the sentences. Do not rewrite it into something formal, the whole point is that it sounds like you
Twenty minutes of talking produces more usable copy than a fortnight of intending to write.
What do you actually do? Who is it for? What do people usually ring you about? What goes wrong when someone picks the wrong person for this job? What makes you different from the last three they called? What does it cost, roughly? What happens after they contact you?
A structure you can copy
Almost every page that works follows the same shape. Use it for your home page and each service page.
- What you do and where, in one plain sentence at the top
- The problem the reader has, described so they recognise themselves
- What you do about it, specifically
- Why you can be trusted: qualifications, years, reviews, photos of real work
- What it costs, even roughly
- What to do next, and what happens when they do
That is it. Six blocks. If you have talked through the questions above, you already have the raw material for all of them.
Phrases to delete on sight
These appear on thousands of small business sites and none of them earn their place. Every one is a claim your competitor also makes, which means it distinguishes nobody.
- "Welcome to our website." They know. Use the space to say what you do
- "We pride ourselves on quality." So does everyone. Show it instead: a photo, a review, a guarantee
- "Bespoke solutions tailored to your needs." Means nothing. What do you actually do?
- "With over 20 years of combined experience." Combined is doing heavy lifting. Say what is true plainly
- "No job too big or too small." Everyone says this and nobody believes it
- "We are passionate about..." Customers do not need you passionate, they need you on time
- "Competitive prices." Compared to what? Publish a figure instead, and we made the case for that separately
Read a sentence and ask whether your closest competitor could put it on their site unchanged. If they could, it is doing no work. "Gas Safe registered, number 512345, covering Oldham and Rochdale" passes. "Quality you can trust" does not.
How much do you actually need?
Less than you fear. People do not read websites, they scan them looking for the answer to one question.
- Home page: 300 to 500 words is plenty
- Service page: 400 to 800, enough to cover what it involves, how long, roughly what it costs
- About page: 300, and make it about why they should trust you rather than your life story
- Contact page: barely any. Details and a form
Ignore word count targets, they are a myth. Write short paragraphs. Two or three sentences. Use headings so someone skimming can find their bit. If a sentence has a comma doing the work of a full stop, break it in two.
Write for one person
Not "our clients" or "businesses across the north west". One person, the customer you would most like more of. Use "you". It changes the tone completely and it is the fastest improvement most people can make.
Read it out loud before publishing
Anywhere you stumble, or run out of breath, or feel daft saying it, needs rewriting. If you would not say it to someone in a van, do not put it on your website.
One last thing
Do not let this stop you launching. A live site with decent, honest, slightly rough copy earns more than a perfect one still sitting in a folder. You can improve a page that exists.
And if after all this you would still rather not, that is a completely reasonable position. We write the copy for every site we build, which is why ours go live in about three days rather than stalling for three months. The process is here, or just tell us what you do and we will take it from there.