Imagine your ecommerce website is a room where potential customers enter, spend some time, and leave satisfied. The door to that room is the first thing customers see. If the door looks sketchy, your potential customers will likely leave and stay away. Your website copy essentially functions as this door, and if it’s well-written and appealing, it welcomes customers and invites them to linger.
Concise and compelling copy captures your brand message and draws in customers, driving traffic to your site and increasing conversions. But, before we get into the techniques and strategies that make for good copywriting, let’s start with the basics.
What is website copywriting?
Website copywriting encompasses all the written content that appears on your website or ecommerce store. This includes the words on everything from landing pages and product pages to more substantial content such as blog posts and technical content like product descriptions and specifications. The goal of website copywriting is to prompt visitors to purchase your company’s goods or services, sign up for a mailing list, submit customer feedback, or generally engage with your brand.
Why good website copy is important for ecommerce
Here are a few reasons why paying attention to the copywriting on your ecommerce site is important:
It increases customer conversions
Deftly written copy nudges customers toward a purchase or action, like signing up for a newsletter. And, the subtleties matter: According to one study, even just adding the word “because” to a sentence can increase the likelihood a consumer will take action. Selling your product or service using compelling language keeps consumers on your site longer and increases the odds they make a purchase. Similar to how a smooth-talking salesman has an easier time making a sale than a novice with limited conversation skills, enticing web copy can have a persuasive effect on your site visitors.
It improves your site’s SEO
Copy is at the core of search engine optimization (SEO), or the way search engines like Google rank your site based in part on the written content they scrub from your pages. Including relevant keywords in your headlines, page titles, blogs, FAQ page, and product descriptions can make it easier for customers to find your site in search results.
It helps build your brand identity
The written content on your ecommerce site is a great place to introduce visitors to your brand. Each section of copy is an opportunity to explain who you are as a company, what you offer customers, and how they can engage with your brand. The copywriting on your site also represents an opportunity to build a connection between potential customers and your brand using specific, emotive, or otherwise engaging language that’s consistent with your brand voice.
8 tips for effective website copywriting
- Use calls to action
- Understand your audience
- Craft strong headlines
- Be clear and concise
- Keep your brand voice consistent
- Test your copy
- Conduct research
- Pay attention to the details
Here are a few tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your copywriting:
1. Use calls to action
All of the persuasive language in the world doesn’t mean anything if there is no clear call to action (CTA). A visitor to your site should know how to purchase your product, how they can contact you to initiate a return, and how to sign up for your email marketing list to secure some sweet deals. Without a clear end point to the user journey, potential customers are likely to bounce away from your site and you may lose out on precious conversions.
To put this into practice, end blog posts with clear next steps, like a field to enter your email to get newsletters or a linked call to read a related article. Add CTA buttons throughout your ecommerce site with concise, clear copy like “Shop now” and “Claim deal.”
2. Understand your audience
Writing is a lot like ice cream: Certain flavors appeal to certain people. If your target audience is made up entirely of people who like vanilla ice cream, it might not be the best idea to only offer chocolate. In the same way, tailoring your copywriting to your specific audience can help increase your brand appeal and connect more deeply with customers, leading to more engagement and brand loyalty.
To tailor your writing, use tools like customer relationship management (CRM) software to identify key demographic characteristics that will then help you shape your writing style.
3. Craft strong headlines
Craft eye-catching headlines that tell potential customers exactly what they want to know and answer the question “So what?” What is this page about and why should a reader care? If you can answer that question convincingly, you have a better chance of keeping web visitors on your site.
Subheadings, too, are a great way to hook a customer and keep them on your site long enough to enter the sales funnel. Think about what you can tease in your subheads to encourage visitors to keep reading.
4. Be clear and concise
When it comes to writing, less is more. Instead of telling a customer something in 10 words, see if you can do it in five. It might seem counterintuitive—particularly when it comes to promoting your business or explaining the benefits of your product or service—but website visitors generally prefer a quicker user journey that includes fewer words and more visuals.
Don’t be afraid to call on an outside editor or edit your own copy strictly. You may find this exercise helps you gain clarity on how you speak about your brand and what the most important messages are for achieving your goals.
5. Keep your brand voice consistent
Brand voice is the unique style of your copywriting and how it makes people feel when they read it. Do you use a lot of technical, serious words written with little emotion? Or do you write with colorful, relatable language aimed at sounding like someone is speaking directly to readers? Making these types of decisions impacts the perception of your brand and, by extension, how consumers connect and engage with your business.
Moreover, keeping your brand voice consistent across your copywriting (making it sound like a single person wrote it) can help strengthen your brand identity and general trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers.
6. Test your copy
A/B testing, the process of developing two different options and analyzing which performs better, can offer powerful insight into the strength of your copywriting. Shopify offers several tools your business can use to find out which parts of your site and writing are engaging customers and leading to conversions—and which are not.
7. Conduct research
In addition to testing your copy and learning more about your customer base through market research, look around at what other businesses in your space are doing when it comes to copywriting. If all your competitors’ copywriting reads in a similar tone, maybe that’s an opportunity for your brand to stand out.
Use keyword research tools to identify the search phrases and words most relevant to your brand. Free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and Moz can help you figure out how to write copy that has the best chance of appearing in search engine results pages—and bringing in organic traffic.
8. Pay attention to the details
When evaluating your copywriting, it might be easy to focus solely on the larger blocks of text on your ecommerce site—areas like blog posts or sales page content. But every bit of writing on your site represents an opportunity to improve your SEO score or draw a potential customer closer to making a purchase. Subtle bits of writing like photo captions, site footers, and menu tabs are often overlooked but can make the difference between good website copywriting and great website copywriting.
Website copywriting FAQ
What does a web copywriter do?
A website copywriter is generally responsible for all of the written content on a company’s website, including everything from the section titles and product descriptions to FAQ answers.
Should I hire a copywriter for my website?
Hiring a skilled copywriter for your business can be expensive, but their work can result in increased site visitors, better rankings on search engine results pages, and higher conversion rates. Writing your own copy, on the other hand, might save money but can be difficult and time-consuming. Consider assigning a small copywriting project and seeing how the writer does before hiring them to take on your entire website.
How many hours does it take to write a website’s copy?
Depending on the scope of work—including the product descriptions, blog posts, and each landing page involved—writing a website’s copy can range from a few hours to a few weeks. Rewriting an existing site is generally quicker, but if you’re building a site from scratch, you can expect the writing process to take a bit longer.
