Need help with copy writing on my website

bucz

bucz

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Shem
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I am no good in putting any decent sentences on my 'home' page, 'about me' page etc. English is not my first language so this is one thing, but I even struggle to come up with something that would sound alright in my native language.
A friend helped me out with the description that is actually on my website, but first of all it's not so great (especially after seeing some other togs websites). Second of all it doesn't include keywords I want and it's not so simple to include them in the sentence and still keep nice flow.
Basically what I'm asking is: how do you do it? What to focus on with stuff on landing page, about me page etc?
Is any of you good at this and could help me without charging hundreds, or do you know someone who does this?

Here is my website www.stradphoto.com so you can see what's there already (which is not much).

I need to sort it out in order to rank higher on Google and not to scare people off :).
I don't mind if you want to critique my website a little. I always appreciate constructive comments and I'm sure there is plenty wrong there.
Thanks
 
Hi as a basic site it fine but I world add a bit in your profile like where you learned phototherapy. I world all so add a few more pictures you taken and put a section where people can leave feedback .
 
One thing I have learned in business is that if there is a job you struggle with, it can be well worth the cost of employing the services of someone that can do it for you, just like you would prefer someone to employ you to take photos rather than doing it themselves. I know copywriters/content creators do cost money, but can be so worth it in the long run, even if it's just for your main, static pages. Sorry I know that doesn't help much by way of offering help with what you have, but if you do decide to go down the copywriter route, get personal recommendations from friends/family/other people in business you know.
 
Copy for SEO and copy for CEO (customer engagement optimisation - yes, I just made this this one up) aren't necessarily the same thing. It's worth paying a professional - putting "Glasgow copy writing" into Google brings up several professional copy writers in your area. There's a few hours of work to go through your website from end-to-end, develop your language style and put it all together. Professionals pay other professionals for this type of work.

On a separate note:
  • The "Contact" link on your heading is very difficult to see. Most genuine views of your website will be to find out how to contact you - making these details difficult to find is shooting your own business in the head. My recommendation is always to put these on your home page.
  • Contact form - why not a mailto link? If I send you an email I don't need to enter my own email address because it's in the header, I don't need to answer a daft question about days of the week. And it's not a structured enquiry form so you're not gaining anything from using it.
  • Fonts and styles - a personal peeve of mine is inconsistent formatting, particular using too many fonts (or poor readability fonts). Why do the Contact Me and About Me sections use a different header font to everything else? Why is there a Customer Area heading at the foot of the Contact Me section that has no information under it and isn't acting as a link to anywhere else? Poor attention to detail in a website suggests you'll have a similar poor attention to detail in the work you do.
 
Aside from the excellent advice above, I notice your about me is well about you. Not about what you can do for your customers.
 
Yv said:
One thing I have learned in business is that if there is a job you struggle with, it can be well worth the cost of employing the services of someone that can do it for you, just like you would prefer someone to employ you to take photos rather than doing it themselves. I know copywriters/content creators do cost money, but can be so worth it in the long run, even if it's just for your main, static pages. Sorry I know that doesn't help much by way of offering help with what you have, but if you do decide to go down the copywriter route, get personal recommendations from friends/family/other people in business you know.
Click to expand...

Thank you Yv for your response. I asked everyone I know who could know someone and I spoke to 2 people who were willing to help but had no time to do so. I'm back in the square one. You are probably right about hiring a professional but business is not great right now and I really need to watch out how I spend my money. It comes to the question: If I pay the professional will it bring me more work and pay for itself in the long run? My intuition says yes, but wallet says no. I know it's an investment so I guess I'm answering my own question right now, but would like to hear your thoughts.
You are actually someone I look up to if it comes to how the wording on the website is create as your reads really nice and I always show your website to people I ask for help as an example of a good in my opinion copy writing. I was even wondering at some point to ask you for that (not free of charge of course) but in the end I thought you are too busy as everyone else. Thank you again for your thoughts.
 
Alastair said:
Copy for SEO and copy for CEO (customer engagement optimisation - yes, I just made this this one up) aren't necessarily the same thing. It's worth paying a professional - putting "Glasgow copy writing" into Google brings up several professional copy writers in your area. There's a few hours of work to go through your website from end-to-end, develop your language style and put it all together. Professionals pay other professionals for this type of work.

On a separate note:
  • The "Contact" link on your heading is very difficult to see. Most genuine views of your website will be to find out how to contact you - making these details difficult to find is shooting your own business in the head. My recommendation is always to put these on your home page.
  • Contact form - why not a mailto link? If I send you an email I don't need to enter my own email address because it's in the header, I don't need to answer a daft question about days of the week. And it's not a structured enquiry form so you're not gaining anything from using it.
  • Fonts and styles - a personal peeve of mine is inconsistent formatting, particular using too many fonts (or poor readability fonts). Why do the Contact Me and About Me sections use a different header font to everything else? Why is there a Customer Area heading at the foot of the Contact Me section that has no information under it and isn't acting as a link to anywhere else? Poor attention to detail in a website suggests you'll have a similar poor attention to detail in the work you do.
Click to expand...

Some nice constructive critique here. Thank you very much, it's greatly appreciated!
Regarding Contact link do you think I should take it off from the heading and put the emails address and mobile number on home page. If yes where do you think would be best to place those information?
The contact form is standard that prophoto gives you and I didn't change that which is probably a mistake. There is however my email added, so people don't have to fill the form if they do not wish to do so. Why to keep the form then, aye? Do you think is best to take it off or change it?
I will change the fonts as suggested but not sure which should i stick to. There are Garamond and Century Gothic I think. Or should I use some other font? Prophoto gives couple to choose from and also gives the option to load some other fonts.
Thanks again for some great advise!
 
bucz said:
Some nice constructive critique here. Thank you very much, it's greatly appreciated!
Regarding Contact link do you think I should take it off from the heading and put the emails address and mobile number on home page. If yes where do you think would be best to place those information?
The contact form is standard that prophoto gives you and I didn't change that which is probably a mistake. There is however my email added, so people don't have to fill the form if they do not wish to do so. Why to keep the form then, aye? Do you think is best to take it off or change it?
I will change the fonts as suggested but not sure which should i stick to. There are Garamond and Century Gothic I think. Or should I use some other font? Prophoto gives couple to choose from and also gives the option to load some other fonts.
Thanks again for some great advise!
Click to expand...
With fonts, best to decide on your style early and then stick to it - you probably don't need too many variations (and they should all be the same font, just varied in size and weight)..
Header 1
Header 2 (aka sub-heading)
Body (aka Normal)
Emphasis (Body +bold)
Quote/testimonial (Body +italic)​

Different fonts present your image in different ways. If you look up the history and usage of the fonts you're offered as defaults (try ilovetypography.com, idsgn.org, www.meaningfultype.com or just Wiki the font) you can decide if one of them makes the right statement about your business, or whether you need to consider uploading something different. I quite like Garamond as a font, but I think it's completely wrong for the style of your website. Century Gothic might be a reasonable choice.

Personally I'd remove the contact form, no one really needs it and they're very dated. Unless you are going to turn it into something useful that improves the quality of enquiry you get from it - i.e. remove the general message box and replaces it with a series of no more than four boxes each asking for the reply to open question to establish what the enquirer is looking for.

I'd use your contact details to replace the Winter Sale banner, either your prices are right or they're wrong for your market - but advertising them at a discount means you'll have a real struggle to ever get them back up to what you'd like to think is the normal price. Talking about pricing. The three price strategy is very useful, but I'd think about changing the midi, standard maxi descriptions. They sound like descriptions of volume, and you're not in a bulk sales market. Think about airline tickets, first class is all but dead and the three principal price points are Economy, Economy Plus and Business. Most people not working to a very tight budget will sell themselves up from the cheapest (Economy) to the middle offer (Economy Plus) without any intervention from the seller. The step up from the middle tier to the top tier is harder and is where your skills as a salesman come into play, or to reinforce the decision of someone coming to you already looking at the top-end option. If your product range was called Standard, Superior and Deluxe (not perfect, I can't think of better descriptions at the moment) you create a circumstance where a client looking at anything other than the Standard package is looking at something better then the Standard - they automatically get a bit of a psychological boost from making this decision. Mini, standard and maxi doesn't quite have the same ring, they already feel they're having to pay a bit more to get the standard package. You should never offer anything less than standard, only equal to or greater than the standard. Yes, it's psychological con - but you'll see it everywhere on the high street.
 
Alastair said:
With fonts, best to decide on your style early and then stick to it - you probably don't need too many variations (and they should all be the same font, just varied in size and weight)..
Header 1
Header 2 (aka sub-heading)
Body (aka Normal)
Emphasis (Body +bold)
Quote/testimonial (Body +italic)​

Different fonts present your image in different ways. If you look up the history and usage of the fonts you're offered as defaults (try ilovetypography.com, idsgn.org, www.meaningfultype.com or just Wiki the font) you can decide if one of them makes the right statement about your business, or whether you need to consider uploading something different. I quite like Garamond as a font, but I think it's completely wrong for the style of your website. Century Gothic might be a reasonable choice.

Personally I'd remove the contact form, no one really needs it and they're very dated. Unless you are going to turn it into something useful that improves the quality of enquiry you get from it - i.e. remove the general message box and replaces it with a series of no more than four boxes each asking for the reply to open question to establish what the enquirer is looking for.

I'd use your contact details to replace the Winter Sale banner, either your prices are right or they're wrong for your market - but advertising them at a discount means you'll have a real struggle to ever get them back up to what you'd like to think is the normal price. Talking about pricing. The three price strategy is very useful, but I'd think about changing the midi, standard maxi descriptions. They sound like descriptions of volume, and you're not in a bulk sales market. Think about airline tickets, first class is all but dead and the three principal price points are Economy, Economy Plus and Business. Most people not working to a very tight budget will sell themselves up from the cheapest (Economy) to the middle offer (Economy Plus) without any intervention from the seller. The step up from the middle tier to the top tier is harder and is where your skills as a salesman come into play, or to reinforce the decision of someone coming to you already looking at the top-end option. If your product range was called Standard, Superior and Deluxe (not perfect, I can't think of better descriptions at the moment) you create a circumstance where a client looking at anything other than the Standard package is looking at something better then the Standard - they automatically get a bit of a psychological boost from making this decision. Mini, standard and maxi doesn't quite have the same ring, they already feel they're having to pay a bit more to get the standard package. You should never offer anything less than standard, only equal to or greater than the standard. Yes, it's psychological con - but you'll see it everywhere on the high street.
Click to expand...

This is all golden and I'm grateful for your wisdom! I will start implying those suggestions as soon as my kids comes off my back :). Very good point about naming the packages! I never thought of that.
I think I will stick to Century Gothic as suggested by you.
I will hold off with removing the banner till the end of January which is when the offer ends, I don't want to confuse people.
Thank you again for all your help.
 
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I have been quoted a £150 for new content on 11 of my subpages from one of the Glasgow copywriters. Which is their full day charge. It seems reasonable but I was wondering if there a cheaper solutions for example in other countries. It's purely online job so I'm not restricted to the borders. Anyone could recommend someone or should I take this offer?
 
Well you could probably outsource it to China for £10, but I'd suggest you want a degree of quality rather than cheapness when determining the image you set to the world ;)

Have you seen examples of commercial websites they've done before? - do you like their style? do you think they can present your style rather than a standard wording?

If you get three quotes you can (i) compare prices and (ii) compare the examples they provide to see which you think will work best for you.
 
People per hour is great! I have got my new logo made for £9. Now I'm waiting for my copy writing, which should be ready till next Wednesday. Not sure if it's going to be good, but girl has 98% ratings and so far there was good communication from her and she is asking the right questions. So thank you again Dawn for the link!
 
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