Should you write your own business website copy?
Your website copy will make or break your website. While it may be a good idea, or even preferable to hire a professional web designer to build your site, outsourcing your copy completely is typically a bad idea.
Why? In my opinion, NOBODY knows your business and your customers like YOU, so there is likely going to be a significant drop-off in authenticity if someone else from outside your business is entirely responsible for writing your website copy.
Most marketing functions are better off left to professionals and there are few things you need to do yourself, or at least be actively involved in, and website copy is, unfortunately, one of them.
The primary issue with getting business owners to write or provide copy, from a web designers perspective, has always been a matter of finding the balance between time and skill.
In regards to time, YOU can make time if you choose to, so time is not an excuse for not writing copy, or at least taking ownership of the task and providing a few hundred words for someone else to clean up, at a minimum.
Skill is a different animal. Some of the smartest and most capable people I’ve ever known (even in my own family) are plain terrible at writing and spelling, and even get intimidated by having to put their thoughts to paper.
If you are in that boat, the best advice I can give you is to find someone that will work with you to write truly authentic copy, either interviewing you in person or on the phone to make sure it captures the essence of your company and target customers. Luckily for you, you have found bizdetail.
While this is not something we provide with our standard Bay Area web design package, we are more than happy to budget the extra resources required to write authentic copy for business website.
If your writing skill is there, but maybe just needs to be coaxed out of you, the best advice I can give you is to pick a time and get it done. I know that when there is a task I’m avoiding, it sucks away my energy as it hangs over me, so I like to do these things quickly, usually within a few days, to avoid that nagging feeling. Find the time and take a night, an afternoon, or even a weekend and just dive into it.
Put on some coffee/tea, or even open a bottle of wine, and power through it. Write out an ABOUT and SERVICES page, and whatever else comes to mind.
What you write doesn’t have to be the finished copy, but it will at least get your knowledge about your business, products, services, customers and more out in the open for someone with more copy writing skill to clean and polish up.
As a web designer, one of the bullet points on our Bay area website pricing proposal is for “Website Consulting” and recommending slight tweaks to your website copy to make it more professional and web-ready comes with the role of a web designer, and in most cases, we do it for free if people take the first step in writing something down
If your Bay Area Web Designer doesn’t include a bit of content consulting and basic editing, find one that does!
Call bizdetail at 925.963.1377 or contact us today
