Website copy plays a key role in building trust and credibility with your audience. It’s the first interaction customers will have with your business, so it needs to set you apart from the competition. This guide to creating effective website copy will cover:
The goal of your business’s website is to attract visitors and convert leads into customers. If your website doesn’t have trustworthy, reliable content, you’ll likely lose potential customers to competitors.
It’s important that anyone who visits your website receives a good first impression, so they’ll view your brand as credible and dependable. One way to accomplish this is through website copy.
Building trust and credibility looks different for each brand. For example, a car company promotes trust by proving its products’ safety and reliability. A cereal company can establish trust by demonstrating its commitment to a nutritious, well-rounded breakfast. Whatever this looks like for your company, effective website copy plays an important role.
You may recognize the significance of building trust and credibility with your audience, but how can you make it happen? One way is by showing that you recognize what your consumers want and see things from their perspective.
This means making customers feel like you understand their problems and can provide solutions. For instance, Starbucks’s website claims that consumers “have come to the right place” for all their coffee needs, which encourages people to view them as the authority on coffee.
According to a study by Adobe, 76% of consumers appreciate when businesses show empathy for the issues they’re facing and understand their frustrations. This starts with your website; for many customers, it’s their first interaction with your business, making it one of the first opportunities you have to engage with them.
Your customers are more likely to trust your business if they know what to expect from your communications, including website copy. If your content is consistent in areas like tone of voice and writing style, potential customers will come to view you as dependable. When this consistency extends to your website copy, it helps ensure that website visitors enjoy their experience and aren’t surprised or confused by what they find.
If your business doesn’t have one already, it’s a good idea to create a company-wide style guide to maintain consistency across all channels of communication. This way, your content maintains your brand voice no matter who’s writing or editing it.
What are the two things that successful, high-traffic websites have in common? They’re user-friendly and free of errors, such as punctuation and spelling mistakes. You’ll struggle to build a trustworthy reputation if your website copy is difficult to read or riddled with errors.
Even engaging website copy won’t be as effective if it has distracting typos and mistakes. They move the focus away from the goal of your website, which is to increase sales by converting site visitors to paying customers.
It’s worth the investment to have all published content reviewed by a professional proofreader or editor that will ensure it maintains your brand voice and is free of grammatical and spelling errors. A professional will also ensure your website copy reads well and doesn’t have any difficult-to-understand or overly technical jargon.
Since 69% of consumers say personal experience is essential to building trust with a brand, it’s important that the “human touch” shines through in your website copy. For example, even large companies, such as Etsy, see the value in dedicating a space on its website to “meeting the team” and introducing the people behind the business.
While displaying employee bios and pictures is one way to achieve this, it also helps to keep your website content clear, persuasive, and to the point. Using the active voice over the passive voice will keep the tone proactive and engage your audience on a more personal level.
Client testimonials are a powerful marketing tool because consumers don’t have to take your word for it about your product’s value – they’re hard proof of satisfactory results. Highlighting the positive experience of customers increases your credibility, and customers will see that you follow through on your promises. And they’re much more likely to trust a business and make a purchase when it includes reviews on its website.
If you include testimonials and reviews on your website, make sure they’re relatable, concise, and results driven. Reach out to previous loyal customers and ask if they’ll write a review for your website. Engage with customers who leave reviews on social media platforms to show you care about improving the customer experience.
Showing that you value the opinions and reviews of your customers will help build trust and loyalty with your target audience. And potential customers will be confident that they’ll receive the exceptional customer service they’re looking for.
Website copy plays an important role in helping your business establish trust, build credibility with your audience, and increase conversion rates. For website copy to be effective at moving leads through the sales pipeline, it needs to be engaging, concise, and focused on action.
If you’re ready to level up your website copy, our business services can help. Our team will work to ensure you publish first-rate content that fosters brand awareness and increases customer loyalty and trust. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help improve your website copy and support your content team with our high-quality proofreading and editing services, schedule a call with us today.
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