How to Write Website Copy: The Solopreneur-Friendly Process
Your website should be a 24/7 virtual salesperson: it needs to introduce your brand to site visitors, communicate your value proposition, validate your credibility, and convert browsers into buyers. But how??? In this blog post, I’m going to share my process on how to write website copy.
From defining your target audience and your brand voice to writing the website copy and optimizing it for search engines and AI, this process works for online service providers, product-based businesses, solopreneurs, website designers and other creatives.
Common DIY Website Copywriting Mistakes
I remember as a beginner the problems I ran into, and you’re probably going through the same thing as you wonder how to write website copy.
Focusing on you too much
Writing about yourselves more than your customers can be an easy trap to fall into—because yes, highlighting your “it” factor matters, but only in regards to how it benefits your target audience. How does your expertise, your credibility, and your unique approach create a value-add for your dream clients? Why should they care?
Using confusing industry jargon
It doesn’t make you look smarter, it just confuses your reader and creates more friction that affects your conversion rates. So try and use words and phrases that people use in everyday life, and ask your friends and colleagues to read your copy so it makes sense to them.
No clear customer journey or next steps
Good website copy has a flow to it. It guides new site visitors who have never heard of you, to being interested in you, to booking you because they’re excited about working with you. But if there’s no customer journey, or information about what your process is like and what happens after they inquire, then it creates another obstacle that your reader has to cross—and they won’t want to.
Generic messaging
I know, you keep writing boring, generic copy that could describe literally anyone else in your industry. Maybe it’s because you don’t know how to write copy in your brand voice yet, or don’t have any writing techniques to pull the creative, emotional and human copy out of your brain. Either way, you need to make sure you have both of these so you can stand out in the online space and entice your readers.
The Cost of Bad Website Copy
When you have boring, generic, selfish, non-strategic copy:
- Visitors bounce within seconds, and all that money you’re spending on your website every year goes down the drain
- You lose credibility and trust, which makes the job of proving you can do your job well even harder
- You have lower conversion rates, so you have to go the extra mile on sales calls and work overtime to land clients
- You attract red flag clients that are the wrong fit for you, and settle for projects you don’t want to do just so you can make any sale
- You compete on price instead of value, which only attracts more red flag clients
Step 1: Prepping Your Brand’s Information
Writing your website copy starts with knowing all the details about your brand, so that you can validate why choosing you is the right decision.
- The features and benefits of your offers
- Your competitive advantage
- Testimonials, success stories, and client results that prove your target audience trusts you
- Validators of your credibility, like your expertise and experience level
- Your current brand language patterns (what words and phrases do you use often that people can connect to your brand?)
Then, you can move on to the next phase…
Step 2: Identifying Your Target Audience & Ideal Client
So many small business owners run into the problem of having too broad an audience, spreading themselves so thin trying to speak to everyone that, in so doing, they end up not saying anything of substance.
But when you know exactly who you’re talking to, down to their:
- Demographic info
- Psychographic info
- Pains and desires
- Behavioural patterns
- Purchase decision factors
- Common objections
- Vocabulary (the real language they use)
—you can create messaging that’ll resonate with more, and that they’ll respond to better. To go even further, you also want to do…
Step 3: Research & Analysis
There’s a boatload of insight you can find on the market, your competitors, and your target audience to help you find the right thing to say on your website.
During this phase, you want to go to your favourite search engine and ask questions like:
- (“category) industry statistics” to discover data that can help validate someone booking you or buying from you
- “Questions about (topic)” to learn what your target audience is wondering
- “Target audience for (your field of work)” to find the people you should be targetting
- “[your job title] for [your target audience]” to find your top 3 competitors to analyze
This will help you identify gaps you can close on your website, ways to differentiate your voice, and SEO keywords that’ll get you found on Google.
Step 4: Defining Your Brand Voice & Personality
A distinct and consistent brand voice can:
- Make you more recognizable and help you stand out
- Allow you to attract more of the right target audience, and create strong authentic relationships with them
- Make you more money in the long run
So, if you haven’t already, you should spend the time defining your brand voice & personality and establishing guidelines so you stay consistent.
Step 5: Plan & Write Your Website Copy
Now comes the fun part: writing your website copy! Before you start, you’ll want to think about:
- Above-the-fold hierarchy → you need a headline that grabs attention and communicates the main message that matters to your reader, a supporting subhead, and need to consider the hero image/video
- Planning the content flow → Storytelling works wonders, so how can you use it to speak to your readers’ problem and show your offer as a solution? And make sure there are multiple conversion opportunities and that you have social proof placed throughout the website copy to validate your value.
- Benefit-driven headlines → Don’t just talk about the features, but focus on the benefits of your offer, the outcome for your target client, and integrating emotional triggers so your copy makes people FEEL something
- Handle objections with care → Answer questions in your copy but also have a comprehensive FAQ section. Address common concerns with risk reversal strategies like clear return policies, guarantees, free trials, giving a rationale for why you do things, and being as transparent and honest as possible.
- Share your values and vision → Your dream clients wants to know that you care about the same things they do, and that you have a bigger plan beyond just making 6 figures. So you’ll want to talk about that on every page of website copy possible
- Optimize your CTAs → Arguable one of the most important pieces of real estate on your website, you want your button copy to motivate readers to take action, place them strategically, and give site visitors multiple paths to take depending on their needs
Step 6: Review, Refine, and Optimize
You want to make sure you dot all your Is and cross all your Ts:
- Make sure your copy aligns with your brand voice across your entire website
- Ensure the website copy is readable and scannable
- Mobile optimization is super important, so make sure you consider that
- Get feedback from your ideal client so your strategic message incorporates their input
- Test headlines, CTAs, social proof variations and other messaging if you have the time to find the most powerful message
- Make sure your copy, H1s, urls and image alt text is search engine optimized
- Now that Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is a thing, you want to make sure your copy is optimized so your website shows up in AI overviews
- Install all your analytics tools, like HotJar and Google Analytics
When to DIY vs. Hire
DIY when…
If you have budget constraints, the time to write your own website copy, know exactly who your target audience is, and don’t have super complex offers, then DIYing would be a good option for you.
Problem is, a lot of website copy templates aren’t helpful enough. There’s still a lot of guesswork, not enough support or focus on the pre-work, and your website copy ends up being a future fixer-upper.
That’s why I’m creating a guided, easy-to-use website copy template and guide designed to help solopreneurs, small businesses, aspiring copywriters, and website designers write their website copy like a pro!
It includes:
- 13 comprehensive modules with snackable lessons and prompts
- A customizable and guided website copy template for 17 different web pages
- 10 resources
- 2 bonus lessons
- A FREE copy audit from me, available to book within 3 months of purchase
- A Figma Website Wireframe Template
Hire a copywriter when…
On the flip side, if you have complex offerings, multiple target audiences, and have high conversion optimization needs, then it might be better to hire a website copywriter. Well look no further than ya girl (it me)!
For the past 5 years, I’ve been writing strategic, personality-filled copy for $billion brands—like Manulife, Subway, and Honda—and small business owners just like you. And website copy is one of the most frequent projects clients book me for.
30+ websites and thousands of words later, I’ve learned A LOT about what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. Whether you’re an online service provider, sell physical products, or cater to people in person.
So if you want strategic, conversational, culturally-relevant website copy, I’d love to write it for you. I’m currently booking projects for Q4 2025, so inquire for my 1:1 website copywriting service >>>
Wrapping It Up
How to write website copy depends on knowing the ins and outs of your brand information, your ideal client, your competitors, and the most strategic message that’ll get you found on search engines and loved by your dream clients.
To get started with your website copywriting, you can grab my Website Copy Prep Workbook: a comprehensive get-copy-ready guide for preparing all your brand information, what you know about your target audience and competitors. It’s practically a replica of the brand questionnaire I give to my clients which, they claim, is the most intensive form they’ve ever filled out before.
Grab the Website Copy Prep Workbook >>>
Then, when you’re ready to actually write your website copy and:
- Work with less red-flag clients and more “OMG we’re the perfect match” clients
- Confidently raise your prices and charge what you’re worth when the time calls for it, instead of settling for projects because “I need the money”
- Feel excited to share your website link when people ask for it—because it finally sounds like you, shares the same personality, and feels aligned to where you’re headed
- Have so much more time in your day because your website won’t be dropping the ball anymore—no, it’ll be answering every question and selling for you 24/7
- Have more aligned clients, more sales from perfect customers, and less worry that you’ll have to give money back to a client who didn’t say an enthusiastic yes when booking you
- Improve your copywriting skills so every email, social post, blog, and future page of web copy you write will be strategic, on-brand, and impactful
