Writing for your Visitors & Customers

Website Copywriting Toronto

When you’re writing website content, it’s easy to become self-serving. After all, a lot of website copywriting is written for self-promotion or to sell a product or service. You’re writing a new blog post for your website because you want to tell the world about your new product. You’re adding content to your home page because you want to encourage more people to contact you. You’re Tweeting in order to increase sales and improve brand awareness.

It’s understandable that sometimes website content can become all about you and your needs. However, good website content is written for your visitors, your customers and your potential customers. Strong website content, the kind that actually does draw in visitors, increase your business and improve your brand identity isn’t written at someone, it’s written to someone.

What does that mean?

People are busy. Yes, you may have a great company and your new product might actually be amazing, but people may not have time to hear that. They want to know how it will help them. They want to know why they should spend time and money working with your company.

Compare these two statements:

  • John’s Widget Factory makes widgets. We’ve been making widgets since 1989 and we’ve sold widgets to the Queen of England and the President of the United States. All of our staff are trained to produce better and faster widgets than the competition.
  • Widgets make your life easier. Our high-quality widgets will help you perform all widget-related tasks faster. We’ve been perfecting our widgets since 1989, so the staff at John’s Widget Factory knows how to make the best widgets available. You can stop waiting and start improving your life with widgets! Even the Queen of England and the President of the United States trust our widgets make widgeting faster!

The first statement is all about the company. It doesn’t tell the reader why he or she needs widgets. It’s focused on “Us” and “We.” The second statement is about the reader. It uses the words “your” and “you” repeatedly. Obviously, it’s tough to write about widget benefits, but you get the point.

Yes, the age of your company, your experience and your expertise are important, but only if the reader understands why this means you’re better what what you do than the competition. You have to outline how your product or service will make the reader’s life better and why you’re the best supplier of that product or service around.

Otherwise you’re just talking at someone, not to them.

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