There’s a point in most website projects where someone says “we just need the copy now”. The design’s signed off, the layout’s done and the placeholder text is still sitting in it. Someone on the client side gets a spreadsheet of section names and is asked to fill it in by Friday. What comes back is fine, generic and usually far too long, and it goes live anyway because the launch date can’t move.
The problem there is the order things were done in. When copy is written to fill a layout, it reads that way. When it’s written from a strategy, it sounds like a company with something to say. The highlighter in the image above is a good way to think about it: one deliberate line across a lot of paper. Most of the work is deciding what to leave out.
Copy is where people actually meet your strategy
A brand strategy gives you a position, an audience, a personality and a set of messages, and hardly any of that shows up visually. Your logo doesn’t say who you’re for, and your colour palette doesn’t explain why someone should choose you. The words are the only place a visitor actually comes across the strategy. That’s why copy is the part of a website you can least afford to skimp on, even though it’s so often treated as filler.
So before you write anything, put these four things on one page and keep it open while you work:
- Positioning: your one working sentence covering what you do, who it’s for and why you. Every headline on the site is a version of it.
- Audience: the one person you’re writing to, the problem they came with and the doubt they haven’t said out loud.
- Tone of voice: three to five traits, each with the line it shouldn’t cross, like direct but not blunt, or warm but not cute.
- Messaging: your core message, the two or three points that support it, and the evidence for each.
If you don’t have these, the copy will make them up as it goes. Your brand ends up being defined by whoever wrote the About page at eleven at night. We’ve covered what each of these includes in more detail in What does brand strategy include?
Write the argument before the pages
Think of a website as one argument spread across several pages. A visitor should be able to follow it from the first headline to the contact form without ever wondering why a section is there. So write that argument first, as a plain list, before you open the design file.
Argument first, pages second
What we do. Who it’s for. Why us rather than someone else. The proof. What happens next. That order, or something close to it, is your homepage.
Every other page expands on one of those steps. Your services page expands on what you do. Your work and testimonials expand on the proof. Your About page expands on why you, which is why an About page that only mentions the year you started and the office dog is a wasted page.
Once the argument exists as a list, every section of copy has a job to do. The designer also knows which parts matter most, instead of guessing which box should be biggest.
Turn your tone of voice into rules
Tone of voice documents often fail because they describe a feeling and leave the writer to guess what it means. “Confident” doesn’t help much when you’re staring at a sentence. What works is turning each trait into a rule you can apply to something you’ve already written.
Direct but not blunt might mean leading with the verb, cutting the warm-up and keeping the manners. “We think you might find that our approach can help” becomes “We help companies look established from day one.”
Warm but not cute might mean writing like a person, keeping jokes out of the navigation and never labelling a button “Let’s gooo”.
Confident but not loud might mean saying something once and backing it up, without adding an exclamation mark or the word “truly” to make it sound stronger.
Do this for each trait and you’ve got a style guide that fits on one page and actually gets used. Then test every sentence on the site by asking whether it could be dropped into a competitor’s website without anyone noticing. If it could, it’s written in the general voice of your industry, and nobody will remember it.
Section by section
The hero
Write one line that states your positioning the way a customer would say it, and one line underneath saying who it’s for or what happens next. That’s all it needs. Save the mission statement, awards and feature bullets for further down. If someone reads only this and leaves, they should still be able to tell a friend what you do.
What you do
Name your services plainly. “Brand identity” works better than “brand experiences”, and “web design” works better than “digital transformation”. Clever names for ordinary services lose you everyone searching for the ordinary name. They also make the people who do find you work harder to understand what you offer.
The proof
Specific beats impressive-sounding every time. Something like “Rebranded a 40-person law firm in nine weeks” does more than “award-winning”. Use numbers, names, before-and-afters and quotes that sound like a real person said them. If you’re new and don’t have much proof yet, explain what you believe and how you work instead. Never invent a testimonial, because readers can usually tell.
The About page
This is where your tone of voice has the most room, and it’s the page most companies turn into a timeline. Write it as an answer to “why should I trust you with this?”, using “we”, with a clear point of view. What you think your industry usually gets wrong is far more interesting than the year you were founded.
Calls to action
Say what happens when someone clicks. “Start a project” or “Book a call” works better than “Get started” or “Learn more”. Vague labels are also harder for people using screen readers, who often jump from link to link and hear each one out of context. Stick to one main action per page and repeat it, rather than offering five competing ones. Button labels are copy too, and they’re the bit most often left to the developer.
The edit
First drafts of website copy end up written by committee, even when one person types them, because each section drifts towards the language of whoever cares about it most. The sales page sounds like the sales team. The founder’s page sounds like the founder. The edit is where it starts to sound like one brand.
Read the whole site out loud, top to bottom, in one go. Cut any sentence that repeats something you’ve already said. Cut any adjective that’s doing a job a fact should be doing.
Make sure every section heading says something, rather than just naming the section. “Brands and websites, designed and built by the same people” tells a visitor far more than “Our services”.
Then check each page against your tone rules, one trait at a time, and against the argument. Does this section move the visitor a step forward, or is it only there because there was a box to fill?
Aim to cut about a third. What’s left will be shorter than you expected, and much harder to mistake for anyone else’s.
Frequently asked questions
Should website copy be written before or after the design?
Before, or at least alongside it. When the design is laid out around placeholder text, the copy ends up being cut to fit the boxes. When the copy comes first, the designer knows what matters most and can build the layout around it.
What is tone of voice in website copy?
It’s the consistent character in how a brand writes, including its rhythm, vocabulary and attitude. It’s usually set in the brand strategy as three to five traits, each with a line it shouldn’t cross, and then applied to every page.
How long should a homepage be?
Long enough to make one argument in order: what you do, who it’s for, why you, the proof and what to do next. For most businesses that’s five to seven sections, each kept as short as it can be while still doing its job.
