Your Client’s Guide to Website Copywriting
Many people have a complicated relationship with writing. The blank page, the blinking cursor, the commas; it’s often one of the most stressful parts of web design for both you and your clients.
But website copy deserves serious strategic thought and investment. Quality copy and content are the glue that holds a web experience together, creating a cohesive brand narrative, influencing conversions, and making compelling sites—not to mention controlling rankings in search.
Clients are the brand experts and often the best resources for copy, but they may not always match a designer or copywriter’s style and polish. When the two are at odds, it can feel like there’s more than one voice on one site, creating a poor and disjointed user experience.
Web copywriting may be an unfamiliar skill to clients, so they’ll likely need a little coaching to bridge the gap between your design and their writing. That way, they can take an active role in shaping their online narrative, work autonomously, and deliver content in a timely fashion.
The supporting work doesn’t need to fall on you, however. Introducing our ultimate guide to copywriting for websites, created especially for clients (but also for you):
The fundamentals of effective copywriting
While copywriting can be intimidating, many clients have the raw skills to take on the task of crafting blog posts, product descriptions, landing pages, and more. A firm grasp of the fundamentals can set them on the path toward crafting compelling web copy.
Here are some copywriting basics to get clients started:
Master the brand story
When it comes to compelling website copy, your client needs to craft a brand story, or an emotional narrative, that captures the essence and characteristics of their business. This story communicates the brand’s purpose, origins, and principles to create an identity that’s consistent across all marketing and product materials.
When brought to life through copy, the brand story builds loyalty, trust, and recognition in the market. The concept can feel abstract, but it’s a central piece of understanding “who” the brand really is: personality, demeanor, and vibes.
Here’s a great exercise to get started with a brand story: imagine the company, small business, or brand as a human being or character in a movie. Have your client answer these questions about that person:
What’s their mission or reason for being?
What do they value or believe in?
How do they interact with others? How do they make them feel?
What are the challenges they face? Who or what are they going up against?
What makes them unique or stand out?
What got them to where they are today? What’s their background or journey?
Where are they headed? How are they evolving?
With these answers, your client can establish the core elements of a resonant brand story. This narrative can be articulated in a simple “about us” format, or crafted in a multimedia format, such as a video. Once created, it becomes a fundamental building block in establishing a cohesive voice and tone (more on that later).
Understand the audience and product
Writing quality copy for the web also depends on how well your client knows their target audience and unique selling points. When a brand understands its audience, it can better tailor content to appeal to the audience members’ personalities and emotions. When your client knows their product, they can position its value to better meet their audience’s needs and wants.
There are likely multiple different types of people, or personas, that interact with your client’s brand. These can be split out into separate categories and addressed with a different writing style on specific subpages, while more general “common” area pages can address the whole group broadly.
If your client already has a marketing strategy, they probably understand their target audience. However, they may not have thought about how to use that information to write copy for a website. Use the following questions to help them identify a target audience. Then have your client tailor their copywriting based on their responses:
What are the audience’s demographics (i.e., age, location, income, education)?
How do they speak and communicate?
What are their interests and behaviors?
How do they consume information?
What other brands do they respect or use?
What factors do they consider in choosing your brand versus a competitor or substitute?
Write clearly and concisely
Quality website copywriting should be short and digestible. While it’s tempting to write an essay about every value prop (more words ≠ more value), visitors may quickly lose interest. They want to get information fast, so your client’s site needs to hook them with content and keep them reading.
More often than not, visitors are simply skimming for relevant details, so structure is a key component of effective web copywriting. Breaking long paragraphs up into shorter ones and using headings and subheadings makes copy much more approachable.
One of the hardest parts of copywriting is saying a lot in very few words. Practicing thorough (and ruthless) editing skills is crucial for writing effective copy for the web.
Here are some exercises to help your client write with clarity and conciseness:
Take out unnecessary adjectives or details and retain only essential information
Summarize a paragraph in one sentence
Break paragraphs up into headlines and subheadlines
Write using character limits
Cut out redundancies by questioning every word’s purpose
Using website structure to guide copy
Effective writing also comes down to having a firm grasp of the site’s hierarchy and each page’s purpose. By understanding how a site’s information architecture is set up, copywriters can organize content to create a user-friendly site experience. They can also write in a way that guides people smoothly through the buyer’s journey, reducing friction that loses sales.
Guide copy with web hierarchy by:
Creating user-friendly pages with purpose
When your client understands each page’s purpose, they can craft content to match website visitor intent. This encourages engagement and reduces confusion for site visitors. When visitors find copy that matches their expectations, the website may see a lower bounce rate, increased conversions, and more.
Many writers start by creating a site information architecture spreadsheet of all of their URLs and looking at analytics data to understand how visitors are interacting with the site. Then, they craft copy that matches visitors’ intent. They can remove roadblocks by creating more helpful content, influencing conversions with targeted language, and more.
Optimizing for search
With a solid understanding of the site’s makeup, your client can also incorporate SEO strategies into their writing and influence rankings. SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of improving the visibility and ranking of a website. It’s an essential part of encouraging steady, organic traffic.
Within a site hierarchy, each page has a singular topic or purpose, and your client should create copy to match that focus. Their writing should contain keywords and informative content about that topic, which search algorithms find valuable. As a result, pages may rank higher on search engine result pages.
Having full visibility into web structure supports clear separations between page purpose and delivering more informative content for search engines. Too many overlapping pages or a cluttered site structure creates unfocused copywriting, ultimately causing weak rankings and cannibalization.
The art of writing for the web
Website copywriters follow tried and true formatting styles when composing text. This framework keeps text digestible and skimable for busy visitors. It also sustains a better visitor journey and overall site experience.
When writing for the web, recommend clients:
Break content into digestible sections
While the long, polished, thick paragraph was paramount in grade school, web copy is shorter and organized in bursts of two or three sentences. That way, visitors can quickly grasp its meaning. It also weeds out unnecessary details and highlights the essentials.
Visiting a page with a wall of text is intimidating for readers and sometimes inaccessible for those with small devices. Depending on font size, large text blocks can go past the fold, or small fonts in italics can appear illegible. Be cognizant of how much copy your client delivers when you incorporate it into your design.
Encourage clients to focus each paragraph on a single simple idea, and use bullet points to order complex lists or topics. This creates whitespace to enhance readability and increase engagement.
Use headings and subheadings
Strong copywriters break up their writing into headings and subheadings to create accessible and readable copy. By breaking up walls of text with larger focuses, visitors can better understand the flow of information.
Headings and subheadings also make web content significantly more navigable for visitors. These headings function as topic sentences or signposts for readers skimming for a specific answer, making it quicker for them to find exactly what they’re looking for.
A heading and subheading structure gives your client’s brand bonus points for SEO. Headings provide a hierarchical structure to your content, indicating the relationships between different sections. These help search engine bots better understand the content and the relationship between pages and sections.
Incorporate strategic calls-to-action
Another common copywriting element is the use of calls-to-action (CTA) throughout the text. CTAs prompt visitors to take a specific action and encourage site engagement.
While they are typically found at the top and bottom of the page, CTAs can appear in the middle of web content, directing visitors to related subpages or actions.
Examples of CTAs in copy are:
Buttons leading to a form or product
Callouts leading to related content marketing pieces
Anchor text directing traffic on large pages
Subscription fields collecting emails
Share icons linking to social accounts
Tools and resources for self-writing
When copywriting for websites, it’s important your client uses all the tools available in order to make their writing stronger. It’s not cheating to rely on outside help, even the greatest writers rely on this gear to craft great copy.
Common writing aids
From spellcheck to character counters, certain third-party platforms correct grammar and punctuation, look for active versus passive voice, improve readability, and more. Many of these tools are free and can be accessed through a browser extension or desktop app.
They’re great for the editing phase of copywriting and can help with any publishing anxiety about quality. A second (or third) pair of digital eyes is always better than one.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
To overcome that “blank page problem,” recommend your client lean on artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, 58% of Circle members use AI for copy and images in client projects, according to Squarespace Circle: State of the Web Design Industry 2024.
Squarespace AI is a great resource to instantly generate first-draft content with a few words and a click. The tool creates sample content to get creative juices flowing, edits existing writing for clarity, and provides ideas to flesh out new drafts.
Squarespace AI ingests a long-form or short text prompt to write copy using artificial intelligence language models. It can also use a simple topic and pre-built starters to generate paragraphs, blog posts, sales pitches, product descriptions, content marketing pieces, or social media blurbs. For existing text, the platform can also simplify, shorten, or lengthen human writing.
Your client can then tailor that AI-generated content to better suit their brand. By adapting the voice, correcting factual details, and adding unique information, they can make AI-generated copy feel a little more natural.
Style guides and templates
There’s a lot of value in creating style guides and templates for your client to reference during the copywriting phase of their project. Guides can be a simple page or a detailed packet, but they should be the single source of truth for website design and copy.
As a whole, style guides ensure site copy stays consistent, no matter who writes for the brand. They can also help onboard contractors and make for seamless collaboration with another copywriter, should your client choose to outsource the work.
Within a style guide, writers should find clearly defined brand traits and voice as well as common guidelines for punctuation and grammar. Here are some common concepts covered in style guides:
Brand traits
Voice and tone
Contractions
Capitalization
Comma usage
Number usage
Inclusive language
Formatting requirements
Outsourcing copywriting
If you or your client are concerned about time or skill level, suggest they outsource writing work to a copywriting professional. These writers accept projects across industries and can write copy that meets client specifications.
Contractors may come from within your existing network or from a third-party agency or service. With a firm style guide and open lines of communication, they can streamline workflows and help everyone focus on what they do best.
Communicating brand voice
The most important part of website copywriting is keeping a consistent brand voice throughout the site. This communicates the unique personality, tone, and style of a business or products, establishing cohesion and unity throughout the site experience.
Establishing a consistent brand voice
Remember that brand story work from earlier? Knowing the “who” of the brand story is the first step to finding a consistent voice and tone. Using that persona, your client can decide how that brand speaks.
Just like a character, a brand voice has specific personality traits that set it apart from competitors. Some brands are playful. Others are serious. Some love “dad” jokes. Others stick to professionalism.
The brand voice should feel authentic and relatable to your client’s target audience and come through in every piece of content. Prospective customers should want to interact with the brand based on its traits, and it should never come across as forced or canned.
How to define brand voice
After conducting the necessary brand story work (see above), your client can begin to define the brand voice. Typically this is a set of adjectives describing how the brand communicates, but it can also be more prescriptive and include examples from the text.
Sometimes, defining the voice is as simple as pointing to writings of the founder or company owner. Other times, it’s a carefully planned exercise of matching the target audience with mission and values.
To help define a brand voice, ask your client to explore these questions:
How would you describe your brand's personality in three adjectives?
How does your brand talk to different customers?
How does your brand treat each of the products?
How should the tone change depending on the medium (e.g., email, web, social media)?
What are common phrases or sayings your brand uses?
What are the do’s and don’ts of the voice?
Addressing common website copywriting challenges
Copywriting isn’t for the faint of heart, and authors of all skill levels encounter challenges at every turn. Some of the most common are:
Creating approachable, accessible text
Many writers find themselves using too much technical jargon and industry language in their text, resulting in unapproachable web content. This creates high bounce rates and low conversions, as visitors may be confused or alienated by the language.
To avoid poor communication with visitors, encourage your client to write for the lowest common denominator: the person who’s never heard of the brand or subject. They should explain every industry term in detail and use simple, clear language. This limits confusion and makes their topic more inclusive for visitors.
Balancing personal and professional
Web copy should have a healthy balance between fun and formal, as most businesses look to reach a middle ground between all of their target personas. Brand guidelines, voice, and tone help establish this harmony. Your client should read the copy out loud to verify they’ve found the right rhythm.
Overcoming writer’s block and perfectionism
Every copywriter has struggled to start or finish a project at some point in their career. Writer’s block and striving for perfectionism are common culprits in the realm of self-doubt but can be addressed with consistent writing and publishing. In short: practice makes perfect.
While it’s normal to hold oneself to a high standard, perfectionism should never be a barrier to publishing. When writing online, it’s important to remind clients that copy isn’t set in stone–they can always fix mistakes and amend errors with a few simple clicks.
Here are some tips to overcome creative ruts:
Free write whatever comes to mind
Take breaks
Set deadlines
Read the writing of others
Embrace sloppy writing
Write within time limits
Reviewing and refining
In copywriting, reviews are an integral part of success. They create sharper messages and voice, as well as more impactful webpages.
While it’s tempting to call a first draft complete, content should go through several rounds of review to confirm that the value props and content are clear and effective. This step addresses deeper concerns than spelling or grammar, looking instead at the overall accuracy of content, appeal to target audience, and more.
Typically, this is a part of a process that takes a webpage through many iterations. Reviewers will read a draft, provide feedback, and send the page back to the copywriter. Low-level pages may only require one round of review, while high-touch pages, like a homepage, may see multiple back-and-forth editing sessions. You can provide this type of editing service as part of your web design services or encourage them to work with colleagues or peers on this step.
Refining with peers and target audience
An important part of the review step is the feedback of stakeholders, both internal and external. As outside sources, they can provide valuable insight into the clarity and quality of the text. They evaluate structure, style, and messaging to keep compelling copy aligned with overall goals.
A peer could be a knowledgeable professional, employee, or contractor (maybe even a web designer). They understand the company, product, and brand voice, and can offer feedback or suggestions to improve flow, feeling, or value. If your client needs help finding a reviewer, you can solicit feedback on their behalf in the Circle Forum. The members-only forum is a great place to seek the advice of seasoned professionals and is a benefit of the Circle community.
The target audience can offer valuable insight into the relevance and effectiveness of the copy. They could be loyal customers, casual shoppers, or people entirely unfamiliar with the brand. This info can be gathered through interviews, user surveys, or A/B tests.
Approaching website copywriting with an open mind
Taking feedback and edits gracefully is an essential part of copywriting success. The overall goal of revisions is to create more effective messaging that works for all, so your clients should not take criticism too personally. Writing is a creative activity, like web design, and everyone has a unique perspective.
After conducting review rounds, it’s key to factor stakeholder comments and suggestions into future copywriting tasks. This mindset of continuous growth and improvement leads to smoother revisions in the future and stronger copywriting skills.
Finalizing and integrating
Once a copy doc has gone through enough revision stages and satisfies requirements, your client can finalize documents by “dotting i’s and crossing t’s” so it’s ready to go live. This step includes buttoning up copy and cleaning up messy docs so it’s usable for a designer or content manager.
Tips for final proofreading and polishing
After many iterations and lots of hard work, it can be tempting to submit a revised draft as complete, but a final proofread of the document can catch errors missed in earlier reviews. Writers often focus on messaging and big-picture ideas in earlier rounds of review, so small mistakes may slip through the cracks.
Ensuring copy is free of errors helps maintain consumer trust, as the writing is reflective of a brand’s quality and attention to detail. Typos, grammatical mistakes, and clunky copy all raise red flags for readers, and they may become skeptical of your client’s brand as a result.
There are many proofreading techniques, and every writer has their favorite. Here are a few common methods:
Read the copy doc out loud
Read the doc backwards
Walk away and proofread later
Switch screens or devices
Focus on spelling first, then punctuation
Handing off to the web designer
After making final edits, the doc should be ready to publish online. This helps avoid misinterpretation or confusion for you as the web designer.
After your client proofreads and approves, they can go through and check the formatting of their document. During this time, they can verify headings are correct and in-text links are accurate. They can also clear out any comments or suggestions from collaborators to declutter the document for future viewers.
Once your client hands off the copy, it will make its way onto the web. Your client should be available for questions during the creation process and make a final proof of the page once it’s live.
Empowering writers, elevating brands
While web copywriting can be intimidating, it’s an essential skill that puts your clients more in touch with their brand and makes them an active part of the creative process. By working with their story and voice, creating accessible formatted copy, and working iteratively, they can craft quality website content that’s ready to convert.
When clients are autonomous copywriters, web designers see a faster web development process, visitors enjoy better user experiences, and clients gain a great understanding of their brand. Plus, everyone is empowered to spend more time focusing on what they do best.
This creates stronger partnerships between you and your clients, as well as better online offerings that reflect the client’s true vision. Through collaborative content creation, clients and web designers can create a site experience that stands out, building strong working relationships in the process.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from all across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
