Great web designs feature strong graphics, intelligent navigation, clear calls to action, and … good web copy. No matter how pretty the pictures, if the words don’t support your efforts, you are wasting your time.  That was clearly the message in a recent post on Web Designers Depot.  Typically I visit this site to find information on design trends, template and images but this recent post was about copy.  The author spent time showing some of the most common mistake business owners make when developing their web copy. While I could identify with everything on his list, these were the things I see most often:

• Self-Centered Web Copy – Business owners think marketing and sales copy is all about their business, but it’s not. When a visitor gets to a website, they don’t care about the company — they want to know what the company can do for them.
• Feature Driven Copy – Web copy filled with uninspiring lists of facts and figures, resulting in poor conversions. – Unless your clients are engineers, they don’t care what type of screws you use as long as they do the job of holding something together.
• Jargon heavy or Key Word Stuffed copy.

The rest of the list included copy that was too long winded, boring, vague,  or formal.  For each mistake, the author had some terrific examples and suggestions.  (The entire post is worth reading)

Too often, we find small business owners focusing on what their website looks like, and forgetting to work on the copy.  Suddenly they have a working template, and are ready to launch, but there are no words to fill the spaces between our pretty graphics.  Fortunately, we have a copy writer on staff, but many web firms don’t  So, if you are starting your web process, be sure to build in time to write your copy or hire someone to do it, so there is something to hold the visitors attention when they arrive!