Pure Ink Creative - Specialists in Copywriting, Copyediting and Proofreading for Online Businesses

There’s way too much jargon in business and on the internet so we’ve decided to provide a guide which will uncover the meaning behind the terminology in copywriting. The Website Copywriting Uncovered series will help you create your own copy or make talking to your copywriter more straightforward.

Part 1 – What is a Call to Action?

It sounds like a demand to sign up to the armed forces but a call to action is actually a sales technique used in website copywriting. A call to action describes a request for your website visitors to get in touch with you and use your service or buy your products. On ecommerce websites the most common call to action is ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ and on websites which offer a service it tends to be ‘call us today on xxx’. If you don’t include calls to action on every page of your website then you are missing a big marketing opportunity and you could also confuse your visitors as they might not know how to get in touch with you. To make your calls to action more urgent you could add a time sensitive special offer.

Have a quick check on your website now and just see if you have a call to action on every page, if not – add one now! If you need any more information about calls to action then please get in touch with our website copywriters.

More to follow!

1. Check news websites to see if what you’re writing about has been featured in any news stories recently use this as an angle.
2. Think about the time of year and see if you can link your post to a special event or day.
3. Take a question you are asked regularly and answer it fully in a blog post.
4. Alternatively, ask the people who read your blog what they would like to know about your area of expertise and then answer it in a blog post.
5. Go behind the scenes and interview key members of staff to give people an insight into your company.
6. Give your readers a poll or survey to complete and then analyse the results in your next post.
7. See what people are tweeting about and see if you can use this as an angle for a blog post.
8. Blog about the websites you find interesting and highlight what you like about them.
9. Ask your clients about their experience of using your company and blog about their responses.
10. Check the comments on your blog (and other blogs) and see if there are any themes that appear which you could base a blog on.

Try out some of these ideas for your next blog post or get in touch and let our website copywriters create the posts for you.

Whether it’s a result of social networking, texting, boardroom speak or teen talk, there are loads of phrases which are as irritating as they are pointless. Below is a small selection phrases which we find incredibly annoying and seem to now be commonplace in our language…

• ‘End of’ – usually said in an aggressive way in the hope of ending an argument which the person feels they are losing
• ‘24/7’- used by people who like to think they are too busy to talk or speak properly
• ‘With all due respect’ – usually said before someone disrespects you (used often by Jeremy Kyle)
• ‘Holistic’ found in corporate brochures and used in a vague way in the hope it sounds like the company knows what they’re talking about
• ‘Not to mention’/ ‘It goes without saying’ – why say it then?
• ‘I’m not being funny’ – people certainly aren’t being funny when they say this, they’re usually about to be rude to you

 Clichés are hard to get rid of in conversations but you can make sure that your website copywriting is cliché free.

Just found this interesting website www.etymonline.com…

 I entered ‘optimisation’ and the below came up – anyone who is optimising their website for Google will know that as well as skill and patience, optimism is also essential for your campaign to be a success.

“Optimize – 1844, “to act as an optimist,” back formation from optimist. Meaning “to make the most of” is first recorded 1857. Related: Optimization; optimisation.”

The origins of the word ‘business’ go back to the early 14^th century and originally referred to being ‘careful, anxious, busy, occupied and diligent’ – five words which will sum up many people’s day at work.

Finding time to actually sit down and get some marketing ideas together can be a full day’s job so skip the hours of brain storming and have a go with these…

• Target an industry sector – if you’ve had success with providing a service or selling your product to one industry then why not try other companies in the same industry? Use your website copywriting skills to add an extra page to your website with details of the industries you specialise in.

• Go offline – if you’ve mastered the art of writing copy online then you will be an expert at writing short and sharp copy. Grab some postcards and send them out to local businesses to introduce your company. The postcards will only cost around £1 each to buy and send out and you could even include a promotional code as an incentive for local companies to give you a try.

• Tell the press – if you’ve completed a project for a big client then let people know. Local newspapers love stories about small businesses being successful so let them know about impressive contracts you’ve won or projects you’ve completed.

• Give advice for free – if people ask you a question, then answer it fully and give them extra advice specific to their business. Better still, you could upload the question and your answer to your blog or frequently asked questions section on your website to keep your content fresh.

These tactics have worked for us so why not give them a go? They’re affordable and effective ways to market your business, update your website and help out your visitors.

If you’ve created any website content then before you upload it ask yourself these quick questions…

• Will it entertain, educate, intrigue, inform or inspire your visitors?
• Is it relevant to your products, service or business?
• Is it written in your brand? Does it sound like the rest of your website?
• Could it be shorter? Are you trying to say too much in one go?
• Have you included relevant keywords? Does the copy still read well?
• Have you included a link to your contact details or a phone number/email in the copy?
• Are your sentences and paragraphs short enough to digest easily?
• Have you proofread it and asked someone else to proofread it too?

These simple questions should help you create fantastic website copywriting every time.

If you have a cool idea for a new website or if you are about to launch your offline business on the internet then you probably have a to-do list at least twelve pages long. It can often be a real headache trying to decipher where to start and you may be terrified of leaving out vital information.

The best way to make sure all the website copywriting you need is included on your website is to jot down the main services your business offers or the main types of products you sell and then decide how you want to group them. Gift websites for example usually have ‘Gifts for Him’, ‘Gifts for Her’, ‘Christmas Gifts’ etc. Generally this task will be easier if you provide a service – checkout our website copywriter services page to see how we’ve displayed our services.

Next you need some bullet points to sum up what your business is (the homepage), who you are (about us) and how people can contact you (contact us) then you have a very rough start to your website copywriting project. If you get stuck during the process then just give our website copywriters a call!

Thanks to all the various awareness days, weeks and months along with national days and holidays, you have ample fodder for updating your blog or promoting related services or products.

In March alone it is National Bed Month, Veggie Month, Fairtrade Fortnight, Mother’s Day, St. David’s Day, World Maths Day, World Book Day, St. Patrick’s Day, World Theatre Day, the first day of spring along with many others. If you run an ecommerce website then why not make your site topical and promote relevant products such as gifts for Mother’s Day? If you offer a service then you could give discounts to theatre companies on National Theatre Day or give away a free Fairtrade chocolate hamper to every new customer during Fairtrade Fortnight.

Seasonal updates to your website will ensure that your website copywriting and marketing remains relevant and gives your visitors something to think about and maybe even an extra incentive to buy from you.

Receiving feedback from clients is a great way to monitor results but it’s also nice to know we have another satisfied client. Mark at Netcom, the Sheffield business computer services company, wanted to improve the readability of his website content and also improve the SEO. We worked alongside one of our specialist SEO partners to create responsive and optimised copy for Mark.

Mark had this to say about working with Pure Ink Creative…

“I’d like to thank you for the copy for our site and also the referral to your recommended SEO company.  It’s refreshing to find a friendly helpful company who isn’t out to rip you off and provides good value for money. I’d have no hesitation in recommending Pure Ink Creative to anyone who needs quality copy.”

If you run an SEO agency or a design company, do you currently offer copywriting as part of your service? Do you get frustrated waiting for clients to write their own copy? Do you feel that your clients’ copy lets down your great website design? (more…)