Article : Your Website Copy Could be Letting You Down!

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A professionally presented business website is a powerful and essential marketing tool: it's the first thing prospective customers will look at before they decide to contact you. If the copy on your website is not written to an acceptable standard, it may be losing you customers. It’s not enough just to have amazing graphics and imagery: you need the words to make it complete. Is the spelling correct? Are punctuation marks in place? Does the copy make sense? These are questions that website designers should be asking themselves before they upload a new site.

One of the biggest flaws with website copy is inconsistency: for example the word ‘website’. Some sites spell it as one word, some as two words; as far as I am aware both are acceptable, but not both versions on the same site! In my opinion, a lack of consistency will deter a significant amount of would-be customers from using the services of a company that has not taken the trouble to proofread their website.

Poor spelling on a website is another costly but avoidable mistake.
The majority of visitors will leave the site very quickly if they find too many spelling errors. This again will give them the impression that the site owners don’t really care; and they would be right! I am also convinced that copy that has been ‘padded out’ with insignificant trivia is also a big turn-off for visitors – clear, concise and informative is the order of the day.

Anything containing textual content should as a matter of course be proofread: it's important that not only are mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar found and corrected, but that the text flows smoothly for the reader. The copy on a website should not be treated as the 'poor relation' of the project. You can have the most up-to-date, eye-catching graphics available but you will still need well-written copy to compliment them.

There are the odd few web design companies around that will happily inform visitors how they can supply them with a state-of-the-art website but then insert second-rate copy, which totally negates any good work they have achieved. This will reduce the initial impact of the site, and more often than not will have an adverse effect on business.
It pays to have the copy checked professionally, whether the design company has written it themselves or had it supplied by the client; it may cost a lot less than you think to have a website proofread - it could cost you considerably more if you don't!

Remember: if visitors to your site cannot find the information they are looking for because of badly written copy they will simply leave the site. The only people to benefit will be your competitors.

About the Author
John Sheridan is a professional proofreader of hard copy items and website copy. He also writes web copy and occasionally accepts small copy-editing assignments.
He can be contacted at: john [ @at ] textcorrect [_ dot _] co  uk
website: www.textcorrect.co.uk
This article is the property of the author and may only be reproduced in its original form.

I especially agree to the statement about spelling errors on a web site. If I see spelling errors on a site, especially obvious ones, I start to questing how legit the site is.

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I especially agree to the statement about spelling errors on a web site. If I see spelling errors on a site, especially obvious ones, I start to questing how legit the site is.

That is a big problem for webmsters who don't speak english well, just like me.....
 

Possibly get an english speaking friend to read over your work before uploading? This may help iron out some small mistakes.

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Possibly get an english speaking friend to read over your work before uploading? This may help iron out some small mistakes.

Yes this is the only solution, but the problem is that I update my sites very very often, so I depend on my visitors feedback

Is there no sort of spell check available with web design programs?

Is there no sort of spell check available with web design programs?

There is but it only helps with spelling, it wouldnt help with grammar which is where alot of errors occur.

I find that If I code first then write in the content it helps. Also I got a friend who is really good at writing. He makes everything way better then I can and near perfect grammer. You need to have it checked over by people I guess. If you wanna spell check it you can just open it in IE then paste it into word and spell check. That would be simple enough.

if you have cash to spare, you could hire someone professional to look through and edit your site?

I don't think it would be worth actually hiring someone.. Unless you got no friends

I don't think it would be worth actually hiring someone.. Unless you got no friends

On the contrary, if you're really serious about making money off your website, hiring a professional to write your content for you might be best choice. Perfect grammer does not mean it can do what you want it to do: attract your visitors.

Here's an article that sums all the reasons up:
http://www.zeromillion.com/marketing/11-reasons-to-hire-copywriter.html

It's also good to invest in a few books on writing (the books would depend on your current assessment of your writing skills) or enroll in a basic workshop (if you can find free ones in your community center, that would be better).  This doesn't mean that you'll be the best writer around, but learning the basics can make the hiring process easier, and you may even learn to be self-sufficient as you go on

Couldn't you write your content in Word or something? That would catch a lot more grammer errors etc. It wouldn't catch all mistakes but I think it would help a lot.

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