Overwhelmed with where to start with your website? Whether you are investing in custom website design, purchasing a template, or building your own website, you will need content. Writing website content is one of the most difficult but important parts of website design. If possible, I recommend hiring a professional copywriter to help write your copy, but that is not feasible for everyone. This is why I have compiled a few tips on how to get started brainstorming content for your website.
Prior to Writing the Copy for Your Website
Before you get started, there are a few things to think about prior to writing your own website content. This will help get your mind thinking about the strategy behind your website. The main things you should keep in the back of your mind when writing your website copy are your purpose, audience, and competitors.
What’s your Purpose
Having a website is incredibly crucial to running a successful business. However, there should always be a reason why you want a website. What purpose will your website serve? Selling products, services, educating your audience, whatever it is – identify your purpose. This will give you something to refer back to during the process. If ever you feel stuck, glance back at your purpose to help you get back on track.
Research your Audience
It is SO important to research your audience before starting to write website content. Creating a website that speaks to your ideal client begins with strong website copy. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What are you looking for when stumbling across this website.
How you want your audience to feel is another important point to note throughout the process. List out keywords that define your tone of voice best such as calm, funny, comforting, entertaining, or confident. Maintain consistency of tone when writing your content to build up brand integrity.
Research competitors
Doing some light research into what your competitors might be doing is another good place to start. No need to spend hours on this, just get acclimated with others in your field. Notice the type of verbiage they are using. Is it playful, strong, or maybe funny? Identify not only things that you feel work well but also what you don’t want to incorporate into your website.
Start Brainstorming Your Website Content
Actually starting to write your website content can be one of the most challenging parts. Staring a blank page is incredibly intimidating, so start small. Begin with a brand dump – writing down everything you can think of that you would like included on your site. Once you have a general starting point, you can begin organizing.
Create an Outline
Starting with an outline is a great way to begin getting your thoughts out there. Begin by making a list of what pages you want to be included on your website. From there, you can build out general sections that you want each page to incorporate. Generally speaking, start with a home, about, and contact page. These are the absolute bare bones of what every website should include. Identify if you need or want a blog on your website.
Elaborate with Sections
Once you name your pages, start thinking about what you want on each page. For instance, do you want a header gallery, about intro, and contact form on your homepage? Great, start there. List them below the page heading in your document. The more you just begin to write out your thoughts, the more momentum you will get in writing your copy. Once you have sections written out, begin filling in bullet points of specific items you want to include. Then, you will want to continue adding more and more content.
Refine and Finalize
Once you have brainstormed and outlined your content, you are ready to refine and finalize. Take your bulleted points and create full sentences and paragraphs of copy. Run this all through a grammar checker such as Grammarly to check your writing. If all looks good to go, you are ready to implement your beautifully written copy into your website.
Still overwhelmed at the thought of writing your own website content? No worries! Feel free to shoot me a message and I can refer you to a few awesome professional copywriters.
