How to write your website content effectively

When creating — or having someone create — a website for your business, one particular concern often surfaces: writing the content.

Everyone knows this is a crucial part of the work. And, as we have seen in a previous article, the sooner this aspect is sorted out, the sooner graphic designers and web designers can get to work on actually building the site.

Indeed, one might think that a website is primarily about its visual design, with the text added on afterwards. In reality, the opposite is true when creating a site. The design must adapt to the text, even drawing inspiration from it in order to align with the atmosphere and tone you wish to give your brand — and therefore your website. Not the other way around.

That said, content writing remains the bane of many business owners making their way onto the web. It is not always easy to know what to say or how to say it. Finding the right words, getting enough distance to explain your business clearly, without losing the personal tone that is uniquely yours.

This article contains no miracle solution. However, we will try to offer some tips and advice to simplify this step and ease any anxiety you might feel about it.

Taking the writing process step by step

The first piece of advice is to proceed in stages, page by page. This may sound simplistic, but it is an excellent way to simplify your approach to writing. By breaking the work down into segments, you will find it easier to manage and will be better placed to complete the content writing in a calm, composed manner.

Generally speaking, the same types of page appear on every website: Home, About us, Our services/products, Blog, Contact. Of course, on a case-by-case basis, it is not always as straightforward as this. Some businesses offer multiple services and/or products, for example, which may make them difficult to list on a single page. If you have a broad range of target customers, a different structure may prove more effective for you.

The idea here is simply to provide some methodological foundations, in the hope of making the content writing process — often seen as an ordeal — a little easier. But you will obviously need to adapt these steps to your own situation and select only those that are genuinely suited to your needs.

Listing the pages and their content

Listing each page required is a first step towards gaining clarity and structuring the information you will need.

Here is a suggested order to make the listed writing process more pleasant:

1 — Contact page:

This page only requires factual information (company name, physical address, email, phone number, opening hours). It takes only a few seconds to note everything down. And there is something quite satisfying about telling yourself you have already completed a page, that quickly. Furthermore, it is often a page that gets forgotten when other pages have absorbed all the attention. Doing it first saves you from that risk.

2 — About us:

This is about showcasing your brand's personality and the atmosphere and values you wish to convey.

A few questions will help you structure this page further:
How long has your brand been in existence?
What is your offering (service/product)?
Where are you based geographically?
What are your brand's values/selling points that you wish to highlight? (professionalism, speed, high quality, competitive pricing, etc.)

3 — Our services/products:

This may well be the most complex page, particularly if you offer a very broad range of services or products.

In the case of a catalogue page, the problem will be quickly resolved — you simply need to list all your offerings with the necessary information for each service/product (price, features, guarantees, etc.).

In the case of services that require description, segmentation can simplify the task.
Segmentation can be done by service or by target audience. In the latter case, simply think about what you bring to each target. Your offerings may be similar from one target to another without this being a problem. An internet user will, in any case, only read the section that concerns them, and rarely the sections aimed at other targets.

4 — Home:

We recommend saving this page for last. This may come as a surprise. Your instinct would tell you to write your content in menu order, and the home page is almost always the first tab. Yet it is much simpler to write the content for this page last.
Why? Because this page almost always draws on information you have already detailed on the other pages.
Indeed, the purpose of the home page is to summarise your business, to be brief enough to give internet users the desire to find out more. The other pages are there to provide more information to those who are interested.
It is therefore much simpler to write the home page once the other pages are already written. You simply need to take the already-written information and present it in a summarised form.

More concretely, you can draw on your About us page to write two or three introductory sentences on the home page. The information will be the same, but in a much more concise form. Whereas the About us page allows you to showcase your values and detail your expertise, the Home page's main purpose is to briefly explain your business. The idea is above all to assure the internet user that they are in the right place if they were looking for you, or to clarify where they are if they have arrived on your site by chance.

In the second part of the home page, you can again highlight the services you offer, where applicable. Here too, a sentence or two per service will suffice. The idea is to inform in an effective and impactful way — to generate interest. The "Our services" page is there to explain your offerings in greater detail.

5 — Blog:

If your site includes a Blog section, this part will be separate from your other writing tasks. The purpose of a blog is to publish content regularly, often topical in nature. Blog posts will therefore be written gradually, long after the site is launched.

To begin with, you can however write a few lines to introduce yourself and present your business. This may seem repetitive since you will be familiar with every section of your site. However, an internet user will be on unfamiliar ground and will therefore likely appreciate your guidance. In the case of a blog post, the idea here is mainly to have an article ready so the section is not left empty when the site launches.

Not being afraid of not writing enough

One of the most common fears in web content writing is not knowing what to say and not managing to write enough.
It is worth knowing that there is no minimum quota to reach. On the contrary, the more you cut to the essentials, the better. An internet user will always prefer to read a few lines of explanation rather than wade through dozens of paragraphs.
You are therefore under no obligation to look for ways to pad out your text — quite the contrary.
A short, well-spaced text is preferable on all levels: it will be simpler for you and much better received by internet users.

Visualising the end result

As we have said, the text and image content needs to be defined before a site and its design can actually be built.
That said, you may find it easier to write your content with some idea of the final visual outcome in mind.
To do this, you can look at websites of businesses in your sector for inspiration, or simply imagine for yourself what your pages might look like.

Not forgetting your personal touch

These few tips are intended to make a step in the web creation process that many business owners find daunting a little easier.
However, you must not lose sight of your own instinct. It is through your instinct that you will stand out in the way you write your content. Your words matter, especially for a local business. The text needs to convey the same sense of atmosphere as if a customer were visiting you in your physical shop. And for that, there is only one way forward: remain true to yourself and to the brand's values.
The few tips above are therefore meant to help. But, as we have explained, not all the steps mentioned will necessarily suit every type of website or every type of business.
It is up to you to identify which ones might genuinely make things easier, and to set aside the ones that might only complicate matters.