Websites! They’re the places people go to find out about you. They’re usually loaded with words. So many words!
And, funny thing: As important as the user experience and functionality of your website are (and they are), people are typically coming to your website for what you have to tell them. Why should they choose your product or service? How much does it cost? How do you fit into their lives?
Which makes all those words really important. Which leads us to suggest that, to develop them, you should hire a copywriter.
Not a subject matter expert. Not a technical writer. Not a journalist. A copywriter. Here’s why.
Copywriters get to the point.
Copywriters are tasked with saying exactly what you want to say, in exactly the way it needs to be said, usually in as few words as possible.
That’s particularly important when it comes to websites—especially when lots of people coming to your website are reading it on a phone. You have to communicate not just clearly and compellingly, but quickly. That’s what copywriters are trained to do.
You want people to do something.
Your website is typically the launchpad for people’s engagement with your brand. Chances are if you’re trying to get people to your website, you’re hoping that’s not the end of their journey. Chances are, you want them to do something.
That’s where copywriters come in handy. In addition to proficiency with vocabulary and grammar and punctuation and idiom, any copywriter worth their salt understands how and why people make purchase decisions. They know how to get an emotional hook into readers that inspires action. Emotional hooks that inspire action are the copywriter’s stock-in-trade.
Words are your brand.
With apologies to our designer friends, people don’t think or feel in logos. And a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the right words are worth thousands upon thousands of pictures.
You doubt that? How many pictures have the words “Just Do It” inspired?
Your brand is what people think and feel about you. Your website is often your first opportunity to really show off why you matter to people. The words you use have to be pointed and clear. No one want to read a rambling product description or corporate history.
It’s a copywriter’s job to provide you with exactly the right words.
Then stop.