Contented Manager

35 services

Website Content Writing

The pages that do the selling while you are asleep.

Illustrated character Ray Delgado“Here's what it costs and here's what it does.”

What is website content?

Website content is the set of pages a business publishes to tell a visitor what it sells, who it sells to, why they should believe it, and what to do next. It is the part of the site that does the selling when nobody from the business is in the room. A brochure gets handed over by a person; a website has to manage on its own.

In practice it answers the questions a visitor asks in the first minute. What does this company do, and is it for someone like me? What exactly is on offer, and what does it cost? Has anyone like me bought this before, and what happened to them? How do I take the next step, and what happens after I do? Each of those questions has a page whose job is to answer it, and a site works when every one of those pages does its job.

The output for a buyer is a set of pages that can be read on a phone, in a hurry, by someone who has never heard of the business, and that still leaves them knowing what to do. The measure is not how much the pages say. It is how many people who read them get in touch.

Sounds familiar?

  • “People land on the site and leave without doing anything.”
  • “Our own staff cannot explain what the site says we do.”
  • “It was written in 2019 by someone who has since left.”

What I do in website content

Every page I write starts with two questions: who lands here, and what should they do when they leave? Then I read what you have, listen to how buyers describe the problem, and write the page to that person. What follows is the specific work.

Core pages

Home page copy is the eight-second test: what you do, who it is for, and where to go next. The about page is where a buyer checks whether you are real, and on most sites it is the weakest page they read. Service pages give each thing you sell its own page, written to be found and to be bought. Product pages turn a specification into reasons; solution pages arrange the offer around the buyer's problem rather than your departments; feature pages explain one capability for the person who came looking for exactly that. FAQ pages answer the questions buyers ask in full instead of deflecting them. Contact page copy says what happens after the form is sent. Thank-you pages are the cheapest page on the site to fix and the most often left blank. Careers page copy filters as hard as it attracts.

Pages that sell

Landing pages are built for one audience, one offer and one action, with everything else removed. Comparison pages set you against the alternative fairly enough to be believed. Why-choose-us pages replace adjectives about passion and quality with reasons a buyer can check. Pricing page copy publishes numbers in a way that keeps the deals worth having. Industry pages say the same service in the vocabulary of one trade, and location pages are written for a real place, not a city name dropped into a template.

Proof

Case studies follow one shape: the situation, the decision, the result, the number. Customer stories tell the same material as a story for readers who skip case studies. Testimonial pages arrange real, attributed quotes so they answer objections in order. Team biographies are short, human and credible, because nobody reads a third-person career history. A company profile is the one accurate description of the business, written once and reused everywhere.

Rewrites and repair

Page rewrites take a page that is not working and make it work, and the result is usually shorter. Readability improvement keeps the meaning and halves the effort of reading it. A plain-language rewrite removes jargon and keeps the technical accuracy. Call-to-action improvement looks at what the button says, where it sits and what it promises. Page structure and headings reorder a page so the answer comes first. Duplicate page consolidation turns three pages competing for the same reader into one. An outdated page refresh deals with old dates, dead links, stale prices and departed staff. Voice alignment brings pages written by six people into one recognisable voice.

Online shops

Product descriptions are written per product, not spun from the supplier feed every other retailer uses. Category page copy is the part that gets read above a grid of products that does not. Buying guides help a shopper choose, and people buy from whoever helped them. Product FAQs answer the questions that cause returns before the sale, not after. Marketplace listing copy is written inside the rules of Amazon, Etsy and retailer portals. Packaging and insert copy covers the words on the box and on the card inside it, the last thing a customer reads before deciding whether to order again.

How it is delivered

Fixed price, agreed in writing before anything starts. A single page takes one to two weeks; a set of five to ten pages takes three to six weeks. You keep the copy, the page outlines and a note on why each decision was made, so your own people can extend the set later. The pricing page shows how quotes are built. Once the pages that sell are in place, most businesses move to articles and blogging to bring readers to them.

What I do not sell here

Web design, development, hosting or choosing a content management system. I write the words and the page outline; your designer or developer builds the page, and I will work from their template or hand them mine. I also do not sell pages generated in bulk from a spreadsheet, city-name location pages with nothing local on them, fake testimonials, or a home page rewritten to a formula that ignores what you actually sell.

Everything under Website Content

35 services in 5 groups. Most people need three or four of them, not all 35 — part of the job is working out which.

On this page

  1. What it is
  2. What I do
  3. Core pages (10)
  4. Pages that sell (6)
  5. Proof (5)
  6. Rewrites and repair (8)
  7. Online shops (6)
  8. Vocabulary (26)
  9. Word game

Ask about website content

Core pages

10 services

Pages that sell

6 services

Proof

5 services

Rewrites and repair

8 services

Online shops

6 services

Website Content vocabulary

The 26 terms you will meet in a proposal, a report or a meeting about website content, each in one or two plain sentences. Link to any of them.

Home page
The page most visitors arrive at first. Its job is to say what the business does, who it serves and where to go next, in the few seconds a stranger gives it.
Above the fold
The part of a page visible before anyone scrolls. On a phone that is one headline, one sentence and one button, so those three have to carry the message.
Hero section
The block at the top of a page with the headline, one line of explanation and the main button. Named because it takes the most space and does the most work.
Call to action also: CTA
The line or button that tells a reader what to do next: book a call, request a quote, add to cart. Every selling page has exactly one that matters most.
Landing page
A page built for one audience arriving from one source, offering one thing and asking for one action. Navigation and distractions are removed on purpose.
Service page
One page for one thing a business sells, explaining what it is, who it is for, what it costs and how to buy it. The page that turns a visitor into an inquiry.
Product page
The page for one product in an online shop. Good ones turn the specification into reasons to buy and answer the questions that otherwise cause returns.
Solution page
A page organised around a problem the buyer has, rather than around the company's departments or product names. The reader recognises their situation before they see the offer.
Feature page
A page that explains one capability of a product in full, for the person who searched for exactly that capability and wants to know whether it works the way they need.
FAQ page
A page of the questions buyers actually ask before spending, each answered fully. Not a place to hide the answers you would rather not give.
Thank-you page
The page shown after a form is sent or an order is placed. It should say what happens next and when, and it is usually left blank.
Comparison page
A page that sets the business against a named alternative or against doing nothing. It only persuades if it admits where the alternative wins.
Location page
A page written for one town or region the business serves, with details that are true only of that place. A template with the city name swapped in does not count.
Industry page
The same service described in the vocabulary of one trade, with that trade's problems and examples, so a buyer in it feels understood rather than generically addressed.
Case study
A structured account of one customer: the situation they were in, the decision they made, what was done and what it produced, with a number where one exists.
Testimonial
A quote from a real customer, attributed to them with their permission, used to answer a specific doubt a buyer has. Vague praise persuades nobody.
Social proof
Evidence that other people have already bought and were glad they did: reviews, testimonials, case studies, client logos and counts. It reduces the risk of going first.
Team biography also: bio
A short description of one person on the team, written to show why a buyer can trust them, in the first or a warm third person. Two paragraphs at most.
Company profile
One accurate paragraph or page describing what the business is, does and serves, kept current and reused everywhere a description is asked for.
Readability
How much effort a page takes to read. Shorter sentences, everyday words and one idea per paragraph raise it; nothing about the meaning has to be lost.
Plain language
Writing a reader can understand on the first pass without specialist knowledge. Technical terms are kept when they are needed and explained when they appear.
Page structure
The order of a page's sections and headings. Done well, the answer comes first and a reader who only scans the headings still gets the argument.
Page rewrite
Rewriting an existing page from its purpose outwards, keeping what works and replacing the rest. Usually the rewritten page is shorter than the original.
Voice alignment
Editing pages written by different people at different times so the whole site sounds like one organisation, without flattening it into a corporate monotone.
Buying guide
A page that helps a shopper choose between options honestly, by the questions that matter to them. Shoppers tend to buy from whoever helped them decide.
Category page
The page in an online shop that sits above a grid of products. Its short introduction is what gets read and what tells a shopper they are in the right place.

Test yourself on website content

Four short games built from the vocabulary above. Nothing is recorded, nobody is watching, and the glossary is right there if you get stuck.

The word games need JavaScript. The glossary above has every term they use.

How it actually runs

The same four steps whatever the work is.

  1. A conversation

    Half an hour. What you sell, who buys it, and what is not working. No charge and no deck.

  2. A fixed number

    Scope and price in writing before anything starts. It does not change without you agreeing first.

  3. The work

    I do it, or I coach your person through it, or I bring in and manage the specialist it needs.

  4. Something you keep

    Every engagement ends with a document, a system or a trained person — not a dependency on me.

What usually comes with this

Three things that sit next to website content often enough to be worth a look.

Talk about website content See what it costs