Why use a copywriter to write your web content?

It’s taken a while, but nowadays most people realise that if you have a business, then you need a website. Apart from a few hardy souls who are happy to learn how to create a website themselves, most people seem to be willing to engage a professional web developer to build their site — so their site looks professional rather than homemade.

However, there still seems to be some resistance to using a copywriter to help people with the words on their website.

4 reasons people resist using a copywriter

1. “I’ll write it myself… how hard could it be?”
2. “It’s easier to type up some words than it is to learn the techie stuff needed to build the site.”
3. “I’ve spent all my money on getting my website built.”
4. “What’s a copywriter?”

As a copywriter with 30 years’ experience, I totally understand all of the above reasons for the resistance. But I’m here to tell you that badly written copy can really impact on your reputation.

Only 5-10% of websites

I estimate that maybe between 5 and 10% of websites are written by professionals. And to be fair, not everyone does need a copywriter. Some business owners are really good at writing and don’t need professional copywriting assistance. But, I have to say they’re in the minority. If that doesn’t sound like you, here are some things to consider.

7 reasons to choose a copywriter to write or edit your website

1. The words will read well and help you get your message across to your target audience, fast.
2. A good copywriter will be able to be more objective and find it easier to stand in the shoes of your target audience. Chances are, you are so immersed in your business, it’s very hard for you to do this.
3. Well-written copy is not just well-received by people, Google loves it. There are many ways that Google ‘scores’ your website and how good it is, and that includes well-written content.
4. Unique content is important to Google. If you copy and paste bits and pieces of your web content from other sites online, beware! Google will know. And you will be penalised. No, not like the teacher that told you off for cheating at school, this is much more serious. Your website will be penalised, and according to my techie friends, once you’re in Google’s bad books, it is very very very hard to get out. Do NOT take the risk. It’s just not worth it.
5. Good copy will help your website rank better. I found this out very quickly when I got my last website built a couple of years ago. Much to my horror, my old website had fallen off Page 1 of Google, but once my new website was launched, it took only 5 days for me to get back on Page 1. And Page 1 is important to me, because apart from referrals, most of my clients find me by searching on Google.
6. Key word phrases. You’ve probably heard of this term. It means the words and phrases that people use to search for your products or services. Having those key word phrases in your website makes it easier for them to find you. For example, a client of mine found me by typing in ‘wordsmith Adelaide’. He used the term ‘wordsmith’ because he didn’t know what a copywriter was. But it didn’t matter, because I had it covered and my site still came up No 1.
7. Get ahead of your competition. The fact that only 5-10% of websites are written by a professional can be a good thing. It probably means that your competition are not using a copywriter. If they are not, and you do, that should put you well ahead of the pack. And if they are using a copywriter? Well then, you really can’t afford not to, can you?

I will let Mark Twain have the final word

“I aplogize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.” This refers to the fact that good writing takes time and much of that time is spent on editing the first draft, which often involves cutting it down to something more concise. Or as I like to call it, ‘short, sharp and shiny’.

To find out more about how a copywriter can improve your web copy so you can rank better, attract more clients and make more money, contact me. I would love to help you.

Brainstorm Your Website

A customised 90 minute one-on-one brainstorming session with a professional copywriter.

An opportunity to discuss your strategy, your website and your marketing ideas. Get clear on your target audience and website plan.

A lot of sole traders and small businesses have a goal to build their own website. A do-it-yourself website is possible, and many people have created a website that looks great. Many more have created a website that looks, well, dreadful is the word that comes to mind.

So is a do-it-yourself website build right for you and what are the things to consider?

Are you good with computers?

There are many do-it-yourself website builders which you can find online. Often the advertising accompanying the builders promote how easy they are to use.

Well of course if you’ve built an online platform that can build a website you’re going to say it is easy to use!

For people who are very good with computers and like working through techy problems, the more user-friendly website platforms will be reasonably easy for you to navigate and understand. For people who struggle with computers or just don’t enjoy working through and learning new online programs, the process is unlikely to be easy or enjoyable.

The first thing to consider is, is building a website within your skill set?  If you are good with computers you're half-way there.

The easier website builders are Wix, Weebly and Squarespace. The more difficult ones are Shopify and WordPress. Take a look at website builder reviews to help you choose the best fit for your needs.

But all of them are harder than Facebook. And all of them are harder than what they, or many of the YouTube video tutorials claim they are. Don’t get fooled into the idea that it is easy. You’ll spend hours and hours working through what sometimes are little, but turn into big, issues.

How’s your eye for design?

Websites need to look good. It is your most important online marketing asset. Your clients and potential customers are looking you up online. Will your website look professional or will it be clunky?

Design is an important element of websites. Many templates will give you a head start in creating a good looking website, but the final decisions about what photos you use, how big they are, what colours you blend together and how to divide one section or part of a page with another is with you. Do you have a good eye for how things look?

Websites need to be aesthetically pleasing and technically solid – often these things are not noticed when they are in place and working well – but they are very obvious they are wrong.

Do you understand what you are buying?

Many of the website builders have add-ons that cost money. The original offer could have a tempting monthly or annual cost, but you may end up paying more in the second and subsequent years as the first year was a sweetener deal. Or as you go through the process you realise a needed bit of functionality or usefulness was not included in the original bundle.

The pricing packages often use jargon to explain what you get for your money.  Sometimes information is left out or assumed to be known. For most first timers, the list of items that are included in the website builder or theme is a puzzle.  If you don't understand what you are buying you may end up buying what you don't need or want.

I love the resourcefulness and independence of business owners. I thrive on helping business owners learn how to do stuff themselves. But building your own website is often not the right decision if you can't understand what you're doing.

WordPress websites

If your website needs are simple, our first recommendation is to consider the all-in-one website builders like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly.  That is, platforms that include hosting the site as well as the website builder. These are usually paid for on a monthly or annual subscription basis.  Most of these platforms will provide templates and themes to help you create the look you are after.

How-ever if a WordPress site is what you want and you are keen to learn how to create your own WordPress website we recommend you look to a short course in your local area. In South Australia, the WEA regularly offers a create your own website with WordPress course. Nationally across Australia, TAFE or other education providers may offer short courses. Look around for what you can find in your area.

Tyler Moore is an active YouTuber who creates great videos on how to create sites in WordPress. His videos go through step by step with no step missing. Allow for many hours watching and learning. Here’s the link to his channel.

Here's another YouTube video tutorial by Dale McManus that optimistically shows you how to create a WordPress website in 10 minutes.  He does get a website up and running in that time, but significantly under-estimates the time required to edit the website with your brand, look and information.

DIY Digital and WordPress training

Here at DIY Digital we've got a unique do-it-yourself website builder package. This package includes

• access to the premium Divi pagebuilder
• set up with our recommended plug-ins
• one hour personal coaching
• ongoing access to our monthly Q&A's

Check out the full do-it-yourself package here.

We also are able to help if you already have a site, often one you've inherited because you've taken on a new role or you've been sitting with a website that has been left languishing for many years. Check out our website maintenance page for more details.

All our websites come with 3 months training. We teach our clients via .pdf lessons, video tutorials, email and phone support how to update their site. We've road tested this package with many of our website builds and continually tweak and adjust it as needed. We continuously improve our training to give you the best learning possible.

Let’s face it – there are a lot of options when you’re looking to create a website. You can:

• ask someone on Fiverr or Freelancer
• give it a go yourself
• ask an experienced local

Fiverr or Freelancer

If you know exactly what you are looking for, using an online freelancer could work for you.  However most small businesses, when they are starting out, aren’t sure what they need.  So here’s some questions to help you.

• Do you need a Wix, Shopify, WordPress or custom-built site?  Do you know enough about these platforms to know which one is best for you?
• Do you know how to write up the specifications for your website so that it is clear and unambiguous for the freelancer you are hiring?
• Websites require ongoing attention after they’ve been developed.  What training or hand-over plan is there for your site once the freelancer has finished his or her job?

If you have a clear understanding about what you want and how to manage the process during and after the build an online freelancer could be a good choice for you.  However if you have little knowledge about what you are asking for, you could very well end up getting what you don’t want or need.

Doing it Yourself

Giving it a go yourself is do-able.   It might not have been 5 or 10 years ago, but it is today.  To create a website requires three main skills –  a flair for design, some marketing savvy and a sense for IT.

• Quite a lot of do-it-yourself websites end up looking clunky as there’s a tendency to add things in an ad-hoc way so the site doesn’t quite flow.  It’s easy to create a badly designed website.  Stick with the template provided and don’t try to be too clever – keep it simple.
• Many website owners are unaware of the elements on a site that can increase (or decrease) website visitors and turn them into a genuine lead or a sale.  Most website owners do not understand how to develop a site with Search Engine Optimisation in mind.  Knowing how to use your site to market your business is important knowledge to have.
• Some people are great at IT and others struggle.  Which one are you?

If you've never edited a website before, you may find starting one from scratch is a steep learning curve. If you intend to give it a go yourself leave plenty of time to learn and discover.

There’s lots of different software choices when creating a website. Many make it sound easy to use their software and create a fantastic looking site. It is possible to make a website yourself, but very few of us would call it easy. It’s even harder to make a site that looks good, attracts and converts visitors to customers, and is technically solid.

Here at DIY Digital we build the site for you, taking care of all the tricky bits, and then hand-over the keys to you.  We give you 3 months support while you learn how to edit your site.  It's much easier to edit a site that is already built than trying to develop one from the ground up.  So while you haven't actually created the site, you will be able to manage it going forward. Contact us if you'd like to explore this option.

Ask a local

Having a local, professional website developer create a website for you has several advantages.  You’ll have a shared understanding of the people who are likely to be your customers.   The website developer will draw upon their experience and knowledge of the software being used.  You’ll have a sounding board for your business ideas and how they translate into the online environment.

• Your website is the window into your business – customers are looking in and checking up on you – are you happy with what they see?  It’s important your website looks professional and speaks to your customers.
• An experienced professional is your assurance of a technically solid site.
• Having a local website builder you can communicate with during the process of developing this key resource for your business will have surprising benefits. Not only will you get a great website, you’ll get ideas, inspiration, clarity and knowledge.

Take a look at our portfolio and pricing page to see a selection of Adelaide businesses that have already had their website developed by us.

The Fourth Option - Don't have a Website

With the popularity of Facebook and Instagram many small business owners opt not to have a website.  This is a mistake.  Very few businesses will be suited to an online marketing strategy that is exclusively based on social media.  Linking people to your Facebook page can make your business appear as a hobby or make it seem like you are an amateur.

A website gives you a professional online presence.  This is especially true if you want your customers to understand your business is already, or heading towards, being a long-term success. People generally want to buy from, and negotiate with, businesses that are going to be in business in 2 or 5 years time.  A website gives an immediate professional presence that a social media page just doesn't.

Some businesses, like bakeries and hobby crafts can get away with a Faceook presence alone - but most others will leave customers with the impression that you don't take your business seriously.  If you don't take your business seriously why should your potential customer?

Can you get a website for free?

Yes, you can.  This article reviews two platforms, Wix and WordPress.  Both have a free website option.

What’s the Catch?

The catch is the website will include branding, inability to have your own domain name and for WordPress it will also include ads.

WIX

Using Wix can be a lot of fun, especially if you give their Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) a go.

Wix is an intuitive drag and drop builder with changes being updated live on your site as you go.  You can preview your site in both desktop and mobile view.

The platform will encourage you with its “loading awesomeness” and “loading, good vibes coming your way” banter.  It can be a little slow to update and it’s difficult to make colour, font and paragraph changes.  However if you don’t like the look of your site you can change the design using one of almost 50 different colour schemes.  It has online help and most importantly an undo and redo button!

If you don’t want to touch a bit of code and you’re happy to go with built-in templates – Wix is a great choice for you.  However, if you go in with the idea that it’s free you may be disappointed.

Here’s two examples of free Wix websites

• Demo site Beloved Brands http://diydigital.wixsite.com/belovedbrands
• Demo site Beautiful Bathrooms http://diydigital.wixsite.com/beautifulbathrooms

You’ll see they both have the Wix branding.  The branding is in two places.

The URL

The Header

The branding is fairly obvious.  For a professional look most businesses would want to remove it, although small membership and non-profit groups might get away with it.

Apps

If you want to add functionality to your site you need to go up to a more expensive plan or you can purchase an App.  Most of the apps are “freemium” models – that is you can get a free version but if you want more functionality you’ll need to pay for the premium version. Most of the free versions are not useful.

Being an all-in-one platform you need to buy from their store – once you’ve chosen Wix you’re with them for all your future website needs.  They get good reviews on their apps – but there’s no competition in price – there’s no looking around to see if there is a better option.  Here’s two examples of how the apps work in Wix.

Site booster

This App gets your site found on search engines and boosts traffic to your site.  Sounds good doesn’t it?  The free version is next to useless.  The premium version is AUD $5.50/month.

Visitor Analytics

This App is like Google Analytics.  If you have a premium plan with Wix you can connect to Google Analytics (which is free).  The Wix version of Google Analytics is called Visitor Analytics and helps you understand who is visiting your site, what pages they are visiting and lots of useful reports to better understand how visitors behave on your site.   Like most Wix apps it’s a freemium model.  The free version has some nice features but the two most needed tasks from analytics (page details and where visitors are coming from) are only available in the premium version which is AUD $8.50/month.

Pricing

To remove the branding and use your own domain name costs about AUD $180/year.

Wix - The Summary

How many businesses would stay with the free version?  Not many I suspect.

WORDPRESS

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is free.  However you cannot have a free website using WordPress.org (how confusing is that!).

If you are clever enough you can download the WordPress software to your computer at home. But this doesn't get you a website that people in different suburbs, states or countries can see.  It can't be found by searching on the internet.

To get a WordPress.org site searchable on the internet it needs to be hosted.  Hosting costs money.

Most WordPress websites use the .org version of the software - for good reason - it's flexible, sturdy and has a lot of developers building plug-ins and extra bits of functionality designed to integrate with it.   Here at DIY Digital we use WordPress and we use the .org version. You can check out the sites we've built using WordPress on our pricing and portfolio page.

WordPress.com

This article is about building a website for free, so we will move onto the version of WordPress that can get you a website for free. The free hosted version of WordPress sits on the .com platform.

WordPress.com is similar to Wix in that it offers the ability to develop a free site guiding you through the set-up process with an easy to follow questionnaire.

And like Wix it is a complete all-in-one package (i.e. it hosts the site).

For those people who are computer savvy you’ll discover the editing to be reasonably intuitive.  However if you struggle with computers you are likely to find the WordPress editing environment difficult.

If you're looking for YouTube videos to help you with your learning, be sure to search with the "com" at the end of WordPress.  Most videos and blog articles use the WordPress.org version.  Searching on just "wordpress" will not help .com users and may confuse you, as you'll get videos where the editing environment looks different to yours. Therefore search for "how to edit my page in wordpress.com"  or "how to create a new page in wordpress.com" if you are on the .com platform.

Paragraphs and fonts can be formatted in WordPress using the What You See Is What You Get (WYSISYG) editor.

There are over 150 free themes to choose from and numerous paid ones as well (which range in price from $50 - $80).

You’ll see the WordPress branding in two places.

The URL

The Footer

The Adverts

The branding might be subtle, but the adverts are not. When the site first goes live there will be no adverts. But after some time has passed it's very likely your website will start running ads. You have to purchase a paid plan to remove the ads. Here's their article about this. The ads can make the site look really bad and can significantly change the layout and format of your pages. Here's an example advert.

Plug-ins

Plug-ins are little bits of extra functionality. They are Wix's equivalent of apps.

Users of a self-hosted WordPress.org site will be disappointed with the inability to access the range of plug-ins in the free version of WordPress.com. To gain access to popular plug-ins in WordPress.com you need to upgrade to the Pro Plan. The Pro Plan is AUD $240/year.

Pricing

The Starter WordPress.com Plan, which removes the branding, connects to your own domain name and removes the ads, is AUD $85/year .

WordPress.com - The Summary

The adverts are just awful - I can't see the free version of WordPress being helpful to any businesses or organisation.

The Verdict for Your Free Site - Wix or WordPress?

For an absolutely free site Wix is the better choice.

For a cheap website with no ads and to connect your domain, Wix is AUD $180/year and WordPress.com is AUD $85/year.

WordPress.com is the better choice for a cheap website.

But take care.

Here’s the stats based on the many DIY websites we have seen and worked on:

• 1 in 10 are great websites
• 2 in 10 are ok websites with a few strange quirks
• 5 in 10 have poor design and poor navigation
• 2 in 10 are really bad websites

Where your website will rank, if you do-it-yourself?

It usually depends on your:

• Computer and technical skills
• Ability to identify and implement good design
• Willingness to stick with it and work through problems
• Understanding of how customers read and scan websites

You shouldn’t build your own website if you can’t build one that looks good, has good navigation and provides information in a way that customers expect and need.

The adverts might make it sound like a doddle to create your own website - but that's not often the experience.

The good news is we've created the perfect package for budding DIY website builders.

What is an Online Form?

An online form is a form on a webpage where a person enters their name, contact details and message. This information is then emailed to the business or organisation for them to respond.

Not every website requires an online form. A business may choose to have potential customers contact them via:

• direct email address
• phone number
• online chat

About half of the sole traders and small businesses we work with choose to have an online form.

Common uses for online forms are:

• make an enquiry
• request a quote
• submit a product warranty
• apply for a job
• give customer feedback
• book an appointment

At its most basic, an online form collects a name, email address and has room to leave a message.

But it can do more than this. It can save you time going back and forth by collecting useful information.

Types of Forms

To book appointments it can be useful to collect the most convenient times the client is available. For example, the form below asks for their best day and time.

A quote form may ask for particular details which helps in the preparation of the pricing.

Designing the Online Form

Deciding what information to collect is one of the first decisions to be made. The next step is to design the form so that it collects accurate information and is easy to fill in. Online forms use various devices to assist with this.

The default field is a text field. Two other common fields are:

• Email field - where the data entered is checked for the characters like the at sign "@" and a .com
• Drop down - where the user can choose between a few pre-defined options, for example state or country.

Another part of designing a form is deciding whether the information has to be entered or whether it is optional. The convention is to use an asterisk (*) for required fields or the word “optional” for non-required fields.

Trouble-shooting Forms

It use to be that contact forms were installed on a websites instead of showing your email address as they would prevent, or at least reduce, spammers. However spammers have long been finding a way to send spam via contact forms, hence the use of recaptcha.

Recaptcha is the name given to those devices that ensure it is a human filling in the form and not an automated computer bot. One example of recaptcha is when you are asked to click on all the squares that have buses, or vehicles or traffic lights. Another example of recaptcha is when you are asked to type the letters that appear against a cluttered background.

An online form is not without its problems. In fact, for such a simple device, the problems forms can create are seemingly random and often frustrating.

Here's 3 reasons why contact forms stop working.

One of the most common complaints we receive is the business owner does not receive the email letting them know someone has filled in the contact form. Outlook, gmail, bigpond and other email service providers sometimes filter emails coming from websites as spam. The result is that someone fills in the form on your website but you don’t get it.

If you are using a free email, like free gmail, yahoo or hotmail, you will likely need to update to a professional business email.

A couple of other things to try are:

• Look in your updates, promotions, clutter, other, focussed, spam or junk folder. Some of these folders might be difficult to see on a mobile phone so head over to a laptop or desktop to view these folders.
• Whitelist the email address the contact form uses in your email settings.
• Mark any you do see come through as not junk or not spam, if they are flagged as this.
• Set up a rule or filter in your email to never send emails from your website to your spam or junk folder.

We recommend testing your online contact form every few months to ensure it is working. One of the main tests is checking you receive the enquiry in your inbox. For this reason it is best that you test the form and not your IT provider or website developer.

Broken Website?

We can help fix your broken or slow WordPress website, support you to keep it in tip top shape and boost the browsing experience of your audience.