Doing a Website Rewrite? These 6 tips can help Improve your new Website Copy...

You've noticed it's time for a rewrite. Good for you!

Too many opportunities for website rewrites are missed. The benefits missed alongside. Rewriting your site helps to keep it relevant. Makes sure that users and that prospects are more easily snapped up. It can improve page performance metrics such as time on page and click-through rates. Having solid copy is a great way to transform your site when rebranding or just changing the design.

Not only that it keeps it interesting for regular site visitors too and can positively improve perceptions if it's done right.

The legitimate reasons to rewrite

• Big internal changes at the organization or business.
• Dramatic changes to the types of products and services offered. This can include considerable expansions to the product range.
• If it's not changed noticeably in the last two years then it might be time to say goodbye.
• A visual or overall rebrand. It's important that the copy changes in step with the brand to keep the identity aligned. Otherwise it's like having your own passport photo with the incorrect identity attached.

General tips

• Keep what's important in sight. Make sure that important information is the first to be shared. Who? What? Where? When? Why? The five W's are a good starting point as well as AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). An 'in a nutshell' approach sums up precisely how your website should be written. There's always content to display your expertise on a deeper level and by providing that and making it easily accessible, highly engaged viewers can get deeper insight.
• Consistency in the key. The secret. Nothing looks more professional than a site where grammar styles, down to the very last detail, are the same. Writing both in US English and UK English on the same site, or god forbid, the same page is just not a great look. While grammar isn't everything, a positive perception of your business is critical for success. When rewriting your website it's important to bear this in mind. When creating a brand guide (which is definitely something to consider for a website rewrite) include phrases that should be repeated. Straplines aren't the only thing to be repeated. Other lines that remind visitors what you do and how you help them can be placed strategically across your site.
• Focus on them. The audience, I mean. Always consider how helpful information is to the consumer. Babbling on and on about the organizations' past achievements shouldn't be on a home page. It would make sense in a pamphlet or book about the company or even on a more obscure page on a larger website. The audience is navigating to your site to solve a problem so it's important to see what needs fixing about the current copy before changing it. There's no point rewriting this page when it might need to be scrapped or placed somewhere less prominent on your website. Let the audience see their own reflections by having copy that talks directly to them. They shouldn't be decoding anything. Your site should seem like an answer to their questions. It should not be endlessly confusing.
• Simplicity is serene. Clarity beats cleverness any day. It's one thing to show your wild side on site, but making your audience feel like they're in the outback is another. It's necessary to check your rewrite to ensure that no place is too confusing. One great way to do this is by having someone from outside the organization check the new copy. Ideally someone with no direct involvement in rewriting the copy.
• Brevity breathes life into the reader. It's important not to get carried away telling every type of audience everything. Far too many of my clients are guilty of sharing irrelevant life stories instead of valuable information. This is not to say you can't emotionally connect with an audience, it's just got to be integrated and useful. Content is better for doing that than copy. It's extremely rare that too little is shared. When your site is read, it's important that viewers are not bogged down by an impenetrable tapestry of text. White spaces can also be used to break up pages where detail is required (such as when showing product pages for engineering equipment). As previously stated - keep what's important in sight.

My personal gold nuggets:

Here are a few pointers that will help your website rewrite go to plan and have the impact your sweat and toil deserves:

1. SEO is super critical to success...

This goes without saying. Your new page SEO across the site should reflect the big changes or the reasons for you rewriting the website in the first place. If your business personality has changed then you should reflect that in page meta-descriptions for the search engines.

A rewrite usually comes after at least some decent time of running your organization or business. Therefore, you should have an idea of what topics people in your area of work are searching for. If you need more inspiration, using free tools available online is a way to discover angles you may have missed. Using the information that's been gathered, knowing what to write about and how to write it becomes a breeze.

2. Check your headlines...

This goes back to keeping what's important in sight. The headlines on your main site pages i.e homepages, product/service pages, contact page are the first words to be read. Make them count. How? Make the benefits to visitors, absolutely, profoundly clear. Clearer than a new Iphone screen. 50 milliseconds is all that you have to make a solid impact in the minds of your audience. With your headline you can be long as long as it explains a pain point, a solution and why that solution is the best one. Paint a positive picture of the future solved by your answer to their problem. Remember, it is about them.

3. You're probably going to make the pages shorter...

Keep what you need, get rid of the rest. Tweak what's left and add in any information that has come to light since the changes in the organization. Especially and mainly those things that make a massive difference to the customer. This could be a new software feature or expanding delivery to another country or region for instance. There are many things to include when rewriting your website but an excessive amount of words isn't one.

I'll leave this one at that.

4. Scannability...

I'm pretty sure I just coined this word now, or at least it's not in the Oxford Dictionary but that's fine by me.

It's vital that your pages can be digested easily. You don't want your customers to feel like an African Rock Python eating an antelope. Everyone has so much on their plate these days that's it hard to stop and focus for most of us. Understandable. That means that when the average website visitor hits your site they don't want to sift through 14,000 words on a home page. They didn't come for the full meal, buffet and banquet; they came for a sample to see if they want to come back later. If they're extraordinarily impressed they may bring a friend or two with them. That would be good for you! It's the same when you serve up any copy, no matter how short. It should be easy to sift through and not be impossible to finish.

Usually it's more ok and actually quite a good idea to elaborate in blogs (like in this one). Offering decent, actionable content is a great way to establish authority and improve the visibility of your site. That brings us to..

5. Write with authority...

This ties in with SEO a lot.

It's necessary to think in the long run, how any site builds authority. A rewrite can have an impact on your site SEO due to copy changes. Positioning yourself or your team as experts from the beginning of the rewrite is the way to go. Talking with authority around topics that are related to your industry can work wonders for establishing your credibility.

Highlighting the experience staff have as well as their level of training can get you a few more clients or customers who may have overlooked your offering. While in most cases this wouldn't be shared on the first pages visited by prospects, it can sit nicely on one of the main yet less prominent pages on the site. You may also include company history and tie that into how that will help customers with their problems. Just don't go overboard with this information and don't use this as the mainstay of the website.

An exception to this is any business whereby company history is what makes the brand. That might be an upmarket Italian restaurant for example or an exquisite watchmaker.

6. Pack a punch...

Creativity.

This is often confused with wit but it's important to have some vibrancy on your site. Non-confusing excitement can make your website standout. This is as true for the copy as it is for the design. It's often easy to see when copy is dry and drab, making copy more lively is a large part of my workload.

Creativity either works or doesn't. The type of changes that you plan to make should be included in your new brand guidelines. The creative flair should not lose site of the audience either and definitely should not alienate them.

Sometimes the way an organization behaves comes to define them, the copy unleashes the success. The power of creative copywriting to brands is not to be underestimated.

Pack a punch or it may be a sucker blow that strikes your brand instead.

Go forth

Now that you're armed with this knowledge, rewriting your website copy should be less daunting .These tips are easy and (mostly) straightforward to implement. Let me know how you get on and don't be afraid to reach out with any questions you have. Thank you :)