Canyon Route Design | Squarespace Website Design | Dallas, TX

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Stuck on Copy?

When designing websites for my own businesses, I always felt like this was the most difficult part. These are the questions I asked myself when writing copy. 

  • What pages will I have on my website?

  • What do I want my future clients to know/what information do I want to share?

  • How should I organize the copy so that it will be the easiest to read and find on the page?

Before I started writing, I searched Google for other businesses offering similar services as mine. When reading their copy, I made a list of things I wanted to include. This was so helpful and I would highly recommend doing this! I was able to make a list of topics. I was able to make a list of “Must-haves and May-haves”. For example,  every business definitely had something about its business on the homepage, whereas some websites did not include pricing or package information. I then took my list and decided from there what I wanted to include on my own website. As I was reading it helped me form an idea of the style and voice of my writing. I made a mental note of which websites made me feel as though I wanted to book a package or contact them, as well as ones that did not.

 Next, I started a document and organized these into lists of bullet points under a header for each page. For example:


Homepage

  • Mission Statement/ Who we are

  • Call to action

  • Learn more button

Services

  • Packages 

  • FAQ

  • Contact Button

I took each list and copied it onto a separate document for each web page. One titled “Home”, “Services”, etc. This made it so easy when I was building my website. I could find the document that matched the page I was working on and then copy and paste all my content over to my website. Plus everything was saved just in case there was a glitch and Squarespace did not save my updates. This is crucial, no, LIFESAVING!!!! Please do NOT write your copy directly on your website!!! Sharing from experience here…


Once you are ready to start writing, you have a clear place to start and can easily tick off your list of information page by page. Make sure you have spellcheck on in your favorite document application, or even better, create a grammerly.com account for free and get great tips on spelling, grammar, and tone. I love Grammarly and use the Chrome extension across my document and email apps. Full disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Google or Grammarly but I love their tools!


Once you finish the copy for a webpage, read it aloud to yourself. There are so many times I have caught errors with this simple step. Next, have a friend or two read it. Do not skip this, you want to make sure your content sounds exactly how you want it and it is error-free before you post it for everyone to read!


Last step! Get your information out there! If you are ready to share all the hard work you completed, let’s get started building you an amazing website! I’m looking forward to creating with you!


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