Website copywriting: a guide with 9 expert tips

Every time you write a text for your website or online store, you have an excellent opportunity to attract new visitors, increase your conversion rate, and stand out among all competitors. Website texts often don’t rank high enough on the priority list for companies, even though they play a crucial role in the customer journey, marketing, and your brand’s personality. 

Whether you already have experience with website copywriting or are a beginner, you will find useful tips in this guide that will help you write persuasive and selling texts that capture the interest of your target audience. 

What is website copywriting?

Website copywriting involves writing persuasive written content for online platforms such as websites and online stores. Unlike traditional print media, website copywriting requires a unique approach because it must first attract visitors to the website, then retain their interest, and finally entice them to perform an action, such as purchasing a product.  

Texts on a website also play a crucial role in the entire customer experience, impacting everything from the customer journey and brand trust to customer retention and conversion rates. Storytelling and tone of voice in your texts also help shape potential customers’ perceptions of your brand. Therefore, it pays to invest time in website copywriting. 

Examples of website texts

Texts are often present on almost all parts of a website. If the website belongs to a company, the main purpose of the texts is typically to convey information about the company’s products, services, and solutions. Website texts can also form the foundation of a brand’s personality and help you succeed in marketing to a specific target audience. Below, we look closer at website texts used on different parts of a website. We also review what these texts should contain. 

Homepage text

Your website’s homepage functions as the virtual front door to your business. It is here that many visitors get their first impression of your brand. On the homepage, you should ensure to have a compelling headline that instantly captures the reader’s attention. The page should also include short texts that clearly communicate the purpose of the website. Whether you have an online store or a blog, the texts you write for your homepage are important because they help determine whether your visitors will want to explore your product range or read your blog posts. 

Landing page text

A landing page is an individual page on a website designed to make it attractive for users to perform a specific action such as subscribing to a newsletter, buying a product, or booking a meeting with a sales consultant. If you, for instance, have a company selling meal box subscriptions, you can create unique landing pages for your different boxes, such as a landing page for your vegetarian meal box, one for your meat product box, and one for your cheese box.  

The texts on your landing pages should briefly and clearly highlight the advantages of your products. Website texts for landing pages should also contain clear CTAs, so your customers can easily complete a purchase. 

‘About Us’ text

On your about us page, you have a great opportunity to highlight your brand’s unique personality and values. In your about us texts, you should, among other things, use storytelling to authentically tell your company’s story. Here you might introduce yourself and your team and explain why you started the business.  

Strong about us texts can make it easier for visitors to relate to your brand because you show them that there’s a lot of personality behind the logo. If you want to learn more about how to write persuasive texts for an about us page, we recommend our article on building customer trust with a good ‘about us’ text. 

Product descriptions

Good product descriptions are more than just a list of features. They should of course convey information such as material composition, country of origin, and ingredients, but they should also make it clear to the customer what problems the product or service solves. Of course, not all products solve a problem. For instance, it’s hard to claim that chocolate solves a problem, but it is satisfying and makes most people happy. 

If you sell a product that doesn’t directly solve a problem, the same way a rain jacket or a fishing rod does, you can highlight taste nuances and create an atmosphere around the product, making it easy for the customer to imagine how wonderful it would be to get their hands on the product. 

Information on shipping and returns

Transparency is extremely important when it comes to website texts about shipping and returns. These texts should clearly communicate your online store’s terms and conditions. By writing comprehensive and clear shipping and return policies, you can pre-empt potential problems and save time because you won’t have to answer a lot of inquiries from customers who don’t fully understand how to return an item. 

Contact information

Contact information text is essential on your website. Make it easy for your customers and visitors to contact you by ensuring that your most important contact details such as email address, phone number, and links to your social media channels are easy to find. If you want to make it even easier for both yourself and your visitors, you can set up a contact form on your website. Responsive and helpful customer service makes a big difference in the customer experience and increases your chances of succeeding in customer retention.

FAQs

Stay a step ahead of your customers by answering frequently asked questions on your website. Many companies have a dedicated section or page for frequently asked questions. There are several good reasons for this. The most important is that you proactively ensure that your customers can easily find answers to any questions about your company. Additionally, a section with frequently asked questions can help you achieve a better ranking in search engines, as many users search for information about companies on Google, instead of looking for it on the company’s website.

Texts about privacy and GDPR

To comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and show your users that you protect their personal data, you must always include text with clear information about your privacy policy on your website. Describe how you collect, store, and use personal data to comply with data protection regulations. Give visitors the opportunity to consent to data processing and ensure that your website is secure and in compliance with legislation on the protection of personal data. You can read more about data protection legislation in Europe on the EU website Your Europe.

Blogs and articles

No matter what type of website you have, blog posts and articles can help you establish authority on a topic and drive organic traffic to your website. How website texts should be part of your overall search engine optimisation will be discussed in the next section.  

In the blog posts you write, you can show visitors and customers that you have expert knowledge while also providing them with valuable and interesting information. If you have an online store where you sell baby equipment, for instance, you can write articles about the best strollers, tips for new parents, or a guide to choosing play mats.

SEO copywriting

You have many competitors online, so search engine optimisation is crucial regardless of what type of website you have. If you have a blog, your goal is to attract readers. If you have an online shop, your goal is to attract customers. SEO texts can help you become more visible in search engines. 
 

SEO copywriting involves using the best and most relevant keywords, but also writing content that is unique and has value for the reader. Text search engine optimisation is also important when you name products and categories in your online store. The product name you choose can be crucial for how many customers find your online store when they search for the product online. The first thing you should do when you write SEO texts is therefore to perform keyword analysis.

Keyword analysis

Keyword analysis is the most important step of SEO copywriting. Briefly explained, keyword analysis involves using SEO tools to find out which keywords most people use when they search for a product or a topic online. You can read more about keyword analysis in our article What are keywords? Every time you write a new text for your website, you should start with keyword analysis. This way, you maximise your chances of attracting organic traffic to your website. 

Website copywriting: 9 tips

Now, we’ll dive straight into nine website copywriting tips you can use when you start writing texts for your own website.  

1. Know your target audience 

Before you get started with website copywriting, it is important that you have a good understanding of your target audience. When you know more about the needs of your target group, you will find it much easier to write website texts that make them want to interact with your brand. Through market research, you can gain insight into your target group’s needs and problems. The insights you gain can be used in your texts. If you know, for instance, that many in your target group are parents of small children, you can use storytelling and write about situations where your products will make everyday life easier for the target group.  

2. Highlight concrete benefits

You should always highlight concrete and relatable benefits in your texts. When you write about your products and services, it can be tempting to use phrases such as: 

This cast iron skillet is fantastic and indispensable in the kitchen. 

That may sound good, but it does not give your potential customer useful information. Therefore, you will be more likely to achieve a sale if you write: 

Cast iron is a very dense metal that resists most damage. In addition, it retains heat much better than other materials, which provides a more even heating of both vegetables and meat. 

Is your frying pan better than the competitor’s? Describe exactly why it is so.

3. Avoid jargon

Keep your language simple and easy to understand to ensure that your message reaches a broad audience. Avoid industry jargon or technical terms that can confuse or alienate visitors.  
 
If you’ve been in your industry for a long time, this might be easier said than done. It can be a good idea to ask a friend or relative who is not as familiar with your sector to read over your texts before publishing. They are more likely to quickly notice if you have used too much jargon.

4. Write concisely and clearly

Website texts should be short, concise, and convey information in an efficient manner. When you have written a text, you can almost always make it sharper and shorter by fine-tuning it and removing unnecessary fluff that does not have value for the reader. 

In copywriting, the expression “kill your darlings” is often used, referring to the fact that you sometimes need to remove part of a text that you yourself are quite fond of, to consider the reader.

5. Use keywords in a relevant and natural way

SEO copywriting no longer means stuffing as many keywords as possible into a text. The algorithms at Google and other search engines take into account far more than just keywords. Keywords are still important, but it is even more important that the text is unique and has value for the reader. The keywords you use in your website texts should be woven into the texts in a natural way, not overused.  

6. Write compelling headlines

Good headlines are always important, but when it comes to website copywriting, they are especially important because they have multiple functions. First and foremost, they must of course capture the reader’s attention and convey important information, but they also play a crucial role in search engine optimisation. The reason is that search engines such as Google use the headlines in a text to analyse what the content on the page communicates.  

In search engine optimisation, headlines and subtitles are often called headings, where heading 1, also called h1, is the main heading and h2, h3, h4, etc. are subheadings. Make sure your headlines tell something about the content in the text and contain relevant keywords.

7. Remember CTAs

CTAs are an important part of website copywriting. These short texts should make your visitors want to perform an action. If you have an online store, the goal of CTAs is typically to get visitors to put products in the shopping cart.  

If we assume, instead, that you have a blog and a newsletter, sharp and strategically placed CTAs can also help you get more readers to click through to your content. Examples of CTAs are Add to Cart, Read the Article, Order Now, Subscribe. When CTAs are placed on a clickable button or a nice banner, it becomes even more tempting to click on them.

8. Write skimming-friendly texts

Make sure your website texts can be skimmed. Studies show that most people do not have the patience to read a wall of text to dig out the most important information. You should therefore keep the skimming reader in mind when you write.  
 
Make the text easier to read by dividing it up with headings and subheadings and make frequent use of short paragraphs and bullet points. This way, you ensure that your most important messages reach more readers.

9. Proofread and ask for feedback

It may seem obvious that you should proofread your website texts, but when you are busy, it is easy to overlook small mistakes here and there. All writers make mistakes, including experienced copywriters. 
 

Several studies have shown that spelling mistakes and grammatical errors can have a negative impact on the impression potential customers get of a company, so you should always set aside time to proofread. As we mentioned earlier in the article, it can also be a good idea to ask for feedback from a friend or colleague.  
 
And of course, you should also dive into all the smart tools that make proofreading easier, such as the built-in spelling and grammar check in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Writing website texts with AI

It can take time to write good website texts. Fortunately, you have many options to make the writing process more efficient. AI-powered writing tools are a good solution if you need engaging and unique website texts. When you create your website with the Website Builder from one.com, you get full access to our AI tools.  
With the AI writing assistant from one.com, you can instantly generate unique website texts tailored to your brand, your online store, your association, your restaurant, or any other type of website. You can of course freely edit the texts as much as you want. This means that you can much more easily tackle annoying writer’s block and quickly fill your website with engaging texts that match your brand and strengthen your online presence. 

In our article “Build customer trust with a good ‘about us’ text“, you can see 4 examples of texts generated by our AI writing assistant. 

Get started with website copywriting

Words are powerful, which is why website texts are crucial for how your visitors will experience your brand. The texts also have a great influence on whether potential customers choose your products over the competitor’s.  

Whether you have a small online store, an association, or work as a freelancer, better website texts will make a difference for your brand and your visibility online. It is just a bit more interesting to visit a website where the texts convey something you can relate to. We hope this guide has inspired you to start writing persuasive texts for your website!