It pains us when we see a client who invests a considerable sum on developing a smashing website with all the right functionality to support their goals—then skimps on their copy.

Sometimes copywriting is a tough sell; because words are a medium that all professionals can use and don’t require the technical “witchcraft” of visual design and programming, copywriting gets devalued. But if you’re one of the folks who give copywriting short shrift, you may be selling yourself short.

Copywriting is a skill, and not everybody has it. It takes a knack for not only economy of language, but a sense for what drives behavior, a strategic view of which information is more important to feature, as well as basic rules of grammar.

Too many organizations shoot themselves in the foot and damage their credibility by rolling out a website that’s filled with poor grammar or spelling. Even slick design can’t save you from looking amateurish in this case. If your value proposition depends on a client believing that you can execute quality, detail-oriented work, you throw the dark shadow of doubt in their mind when your copy is riddled with easily avoidable mistakes.

Or too many exclamation points!!! (Extra exclamation points do not make something extra exciting.) If your website is the $2000 suit in which you appear in front of your prospect, then sloppy copy is the splash of ketchup on that suit’s lapel.

There’s a strategic aspect to copywriting that folks also miss. Even in today’s short-attention-span, image-centric landscape, words are still the primary medium by which your prospect will accept or reject your potential value. Sometimes those words have less than one second to resonate; we help our clients use that split-second to maximum effect, absorbing your knowledge of your market and product to help you prioritize and crystallize the messages that drive action and align with your differentiators.

We have seen folks who, despite knowing their own product back and forth clutter their valuable headlines and lead-off copy with self-satisfied, feature-oriented verbiage that completely forgets benefits. Like the old saying goes, people don’t want a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole. This is often the downfall of technical folks, who assume that they are talking to other technical folks and pack their copy full of minutia that they think will be impressive—while totally forgetting to talk about how they will make their prospect’s lives easier and help them make more money.

There’s another intangible that copywriters bring, and that’s a good ear. A sense for how a sentence should feel. They take rough concepts and make them smooth and readable. Clunky verbiage, while not as bad a sin as spelling/grammar errors, can have the same credibility-draining effect.

Even if you insist on writing all the first drafts yourself, at least have somebody look at it with a fresh set of eyes; they’ll ask good questions about the goals you’re trying to achieve and, for minimal investment, help you debug it, delivering you a site that reads as good as it looks—and help you win visitor confidence and action.

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Planet Media is an eco-friendly and sustainable creative agency specializing in branding, UX/UI design, web development, ecommerce, and digital marketing solutions. We have extensive experience in developing, promoting, expanding, or reinventing your web presence.

Contact our Denver, Colorado office for a no-obligation, project cost analysis.