Images are becoming increasingly important in media and digital marketing, from larger and larger cover photos and posts on social platforms to the use of infographics to relay information in an easy to digest manner. Thus, it stands to reason that photos and graphics should play an important role on your website. However, this should not be at the expense of all traditional copy.

Copy Can’t Be Left Behind

It can be tempting to let photos speak for themselves on your website – especially if it’s an e-commerce site – with little to no supporting copy. Resist this urge to push your site live without a solid base of copy on each page. The reasoning for this approach is three-fold:

• Following SEO Best Practices:

  Google penalizes sites with what they deem to be “thin content” – or pages with little to no content – even if they may be of use to your site visitors. Adding sufficient text to each page not only prevents you from becoming a target, it gives you greater opportunities to optimize for you keywords.

• Answering Customer Questions:

  Customers quickly become frustrated when they feel as though they can’t find the answers that they’re looking for. Providing adequate information in the text on each page greatly decreases the chances that they will abandon your website and go looking elsewhere.

• Encouraging Further Site Navigation:

  Within the copy on your site, you can refer to other products, services, or pages on your site and link directly to them. This strategy influences users to spend more time on your site clicking through to additional pages they may not have viewed otherwise.

Incorporating Copy

Knowing what to include for copy on your visual site can be difficult, particularly if you’re not an experienced copywriter. Following these steps will help flush out the text for effective copy:

• Consider the Purpose of the Page:

  Before you sit down to write your copy, consider the purpose of each page and what the goal is for your users. Is it a gallery of your products? A landing page that leads off to sub-pages? Should visitors use this page to find others on your site, to purchase products, or to fill out a form? Any copy that you write will need to be crafted with this purpose in mind and should lead users to the end goal.

• Answer Your Customers’ Questions:

  Aside from what you want to tell your customers, contemplate what questions they may have about that content. Ask friends or family members to review the pages and tell you if there any points on which they are confused or any holes in the content. Ask your staff about the customer questions they receive regularly and be sure to make the answers clear on the site.

• Include Bullets Where Possible:

  Bullet points, aside from getting information across quickly and efficiently, are often quicker to craft than full paragraphs of text. Don’t rely solely on bullet points and lists, but do use them strategically throughout the site to provide necessary information.

Need Help?

Still not sure where to begin when drafting copy for your site? The benefit of working with a full service digital marketing firm is that our team of copywriters can craft text for your site that hits all of these points and adheres to marketing best practices.

Ready to revamp (or introduce) the copy on your site? Reach out to us for a free consultation.