When people think of their business website, they generally only consider the layout. After all, high profile sites generally have headlines and pictures. Go to CNN.com. And then check out ESPN.com. While you’re looking, swing by Yahoo, StarWars.com, and U2.com. You’ll find an assortment of neatly integrated pictures, headlines, and lots and lots of links. It’s pretty, it’s interesting, and it’s effective.

And it’s not for you, dear small business owner.

Large sites based on articles and constant news updates thrive on immediate information overload – big, brash headlines and eye-catching pictures to grab you and get clicking from article to article, headline to headline.

Unfortunately, this method – as popular as it seems – does not work for small business. In fact, small businesses often fall into the trap of trying to design a flashy (no, not Flash) site that emulates these sites. It doesn’t work, mainly because of the vast difference in the content that is offered. Small businesses are pushing services or products while these sites are pushing information such as articles, press releases, and message boards.

For small businesses, websites require two things: the design and the content. Owners often think that if they have a great layout, then their business will sell itself. But that’s not true. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it’s the writing and the content that will seal the deal for your small business. And that’s why web copy matters – and why you should take the time to do it right.

Many small business owners are overtaxed and overloaded. They try to be a jack-of-all-trades because fewer hired hands translates to larger overall profits. Under this mindset, they’ll often write the web copy themselves, review it once, and upload it to their site. However, the problem lies in each individual owner’s ability to write and edit. If they cannot write at the same level as a professional copywriter, then there’s a chance that a web surfer’s first impression is one of unprofessionalism. If there are significant grammatical or style errors, the impression goes from unprofessionalism to something even worse – a desire to shop somewhere else.

It’s basic human nature. We gravitate towards the nicer, cleaner presentation. If a site looks like it has been designed and written by someone who’s not a professional, then it’s hard to take the business seriously. The viewer may get the impression that the site is a mere hobby for the owner when it is, in actuality, their means of putting food on the table.

Web copy matters in terms of style and grammar for presentation, but word choices also matter for another aspect of e-commerce: search engine optimization (SEO). While SEO takes many different things into account (metatags, file names, title bars, etc.), it also analyzes the density of keywords. This analysis allows the search engine to rank sites in order of density percentage. The trick is getting a high percentage while making your website read well.

Inexperienced writers see this as an opportunity to repeat certain business-related words or phrases over and over in order to get a higher SEO score. For visitors who understand SEO, this comes across as pandering to the search engine sites. For visitors who don’t understand SEO, this just comes across as clunky and awkward writing. In either case, it falls into the same trap of looking unprofessional.

It’s true that some web surfers may not read the content too closely or even care about the aforementioned issues. However, it’s a fact that you’ll lose out on a certain percentage of customers who are turned off by this sort of thing. Can you put a price on lost customers? Smart business people will tell you that it’s worth your time and money to do it right.

Sometimes, getting your web copy right just means doing a little research on SEO techniques and having a friend who majored in English double check your grammar style. Other times, it means searching for a freelance copywriter to ensure that the job is done right. Whatever your situation is, make sure you don’t make the same mistake that many of your competitors probably are doing right now.

Get your web copy done right. You’ll look more professional than your competitors – and that naturally means more clients, more sales, and more profit. And when your competitors tell you that web copy doesn’t matter, you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

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About the author: Mike Chen is a San Francisco Bay Area-based freelance writer and consultant with diverse experience in copywriting, technical writing, and journalism. His articles on business, music, and sports have been regularly published for years and he is the author of 6 Methods For Marketing Your Small Business Online (available at http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com). His writing portfolio can be viewed at http://www.mikechenwriting.com/. mailto:info@mikechenwriting.com for questions, comments, or copywriting estimates.

Copyright © 2005 by Mike Chen. Author grants permission to reprint this article as long as the complete Bio and author's information including website and contact information remains intact. If you would like to receive additional articles, contact Mike Chen
at mailto:info@mikechenwriting.com.