So you have paid for your shiny new website design and you reckon it’s looking great. But then you go and spoil it all by trying to write the copy yourself.

The most successful business sites and ecommerce sites are those that have been both designed and written by the professionals.

Bashing out the copy for your website really won’t work – and, indeed, poor copy will pretty much negate your beautifully designed site because to gain conversions you need people to look and READ about your service or products.

All the internet usage research shows that most potential clients are turned off by shoddy copy or poor grammar and content. Which means people will switch to another website that does it more accurately.

Here we bring you six reasons why you need to hire a professional copywriter for your website:

1.   If you write about your own content you may easily slip into the trap of writing about yourself – and not about the benefits of your company to potential clients. Instead, a professional copywriter will be experienced at assessing what your company does, why it is so great and making a considered list of all the benefits of the services or products that you offer. Remember they will have done all this before so they will be starting from an objective standpoint.

2. A copywriter will know to write about “we” and not about “you”. Using such language immediately makes clients feel that you are a professional  business.

3.   A copywriter will not fall into the trap of using your industry jargon. They will know that your service should be written so that every potential client understands what is being sold.  Using words that clients do not understand could easily alienate them.

4.  Are you sure about your grammar? Do you tend to mis-spell words? And what about apostrophes? It’s been shown time and again that websites with sloppy copy or errors are an immediate turn off for a large part of the population. Let the professional get it right for you.

5.  Do you waffle on and used 20 words when six will do? A copywriter knows how to write effective and engaging copy. They will utilise short paragraphs, bullet points, headers and selective bolding; all the things that make reading a website so much easier. (Note that reading from a screen is different from reading the printed page. People will scan the content of your website so you need to ensure that relevant words and phrases will be written correctly.)

6. Do you forget – or can’t find the time – to regularly update you website? It’s important that keep your website current and that you add new content. You could hire a copywriter on a small monthly retainer to keep tabs on your content and update a blog for you.

Ask your web design company for a trusted copywriter.

Google rankings can be hard to come by, but with some creative thinking – and writing – businesses can effectively boost the traffic to their websites. One way to do this is to include more detail on products and services pages. But don’t imagine for a second that you can do this yourself. Your best plan is to author and expert or an experienced content writer to put together some relevant copy.

More products/services copy

Don’t assume that web visitors know and fully understand your products or services. Not many people are experts, so the best plan is to offer a visitor clear and detailed information about what exactly it is that you do.

Tip 1: Create a new page for each service that your offer. Go into some detail, although it won’t help if you bamboozle visitors with info. Basically you need to outline a serve and tell visitors why s is special.

Tip 2: Also, most people will jump to a service that most interests then so ensure that your service pages can each act as a stand-alone description.

Tip 3: You can add testimonials or case studies for added value and content.

Tip 4: Each page will be more Google-friendly than a catch-all page that mentions a whole host of services in passing.

Expert articles

You could launch an articles section on your website offering clients advice or information that they might usually expect to pay for. For example, if you have a soft-furnishing business why not add articles about how to create a particular room look or the latest trends in fabrics?

It’s possible to publish such articles on your site in several different ways, for example, as a newsletter, a blog or video links.

It’s widely regarded that the first text in most website pages should be a summary of one or two sentences telling the viewer exactly what is the function of the page.

This starter-summary has several important functions.

• It is a quick way to tell the reader what your page is about.
• It helps you, the writer to sum up what your page is all about.
• It can double as the text seen in search engine results (after the page title)

How to write a summary:

* Get to the point quickly. Don’t waste time giving background info, this is the place for direct, specific information about your page, not the whole site.

* Write the summary so it makes sense when read as a stand-alone item.

* It must be useful in search results

* It should be not more than three sentences.

Here are two simple page summary examples:

1) Use this page to find out more about the coaching and training sessions at Glasgow Triathlon Club. There is also a link to the useful club forum.

2) If you’re looking for hill walking routes in the Aviemore area then this is the page for you. There is a range of graded routes from easy/beginner to expert/experienced.

Many studies of how users read text on the internet has revealed that they do not actually read. Instead many people scan the text – and especially when they are looking for business or company information.

A study of five different writing styles found that a website scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of a promotional style.

Combining these three changes into a website that was concise, scannable and objective resulted in 124% higher measured usability.

So think about all of this when you’re writing your next piece of content for your website.

Tips for web writing: Ensure that you write in a simple, clear and straightforward manner. Include lots of sub-heads and straight-talking headlines. Bold up words if they are important. Don’t over-write but don’t under-write either. Research has shown that about 250 words is the optimum per page.

The bottom line is that it is better to employ someone else to write your copy if you are not experienced, as it will pay dividends in the long-term.

A successful website needs good, quality content. If you don’t already know this, then now is the time to get clued up.

While you’ll need to get people to come to your website in the first place (so you’ll have to invest in some promotion and marketing), once they find your website they will only stick with you if they like what they read. Poor content equals a quick exit, rather like when you read the first page of a new novel. But if visitors are instantly attracted to good content then they are likely to spread the word. In the internet world, word is spread via “links”.

And it doesn’t stop here. Make sure that your website also has RSS feeds so visitors can easily share the word. This makes it simpler for people who like the content on your website to spread the word to others via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Digg etc. The more people who share your website around the more links you’ll get and the more your website will be read. It goes on and on.

But don’t let people bad mouth you. If your content stinks, or is inaccurate in any way, then visitors might well spread the word on your poor website. No website owner or on-line business wants a bad reputation. Remember it’s just as easy for visitors to spread a “bad’ word, as it is a “good” word. Creating good content gives you credibility.

So now you’re in the position to gain advertisers. Advertisers and sponsors like to know that websites have a good reputation and lots of visitors so once you’ve set up your good quality, reputable website there is more chance of making some money form advertising. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

That’s why content is king! Because it can pave the way to untold riches.

If you thought that grammar and spelling matter less on the internet then take heed of a recent survey.

Almost 40% of respondents asked by GooseGrade, a user copy-editing service, revealed that they had come across blogs and websites with grammatical errors or inaccuracies.

More than a quarter said they experienced these problems frequently, while 14% said “very often”.

But more critically, a third said they abandoned a site immediately if they encountered spelling and grammar mistakes.

Perhaps it might be worth paying a professional copywriter or proofreader to ensure your website is grammatically correct.