How to Write Website Copy When You Are Not a Writer

Writing your own website copy is the step that stalls most small business projects. Not because it is hard, but because staring at an empty homepage invites people to write like a brochure instead of like themselves.

You do not need to be a writer. You need to answer specific questions in plain sentences. Here is the method.

Start with the questions, not the page

Before writing anything, answer these on paper, in the way you would say them out loud to someone at a counter:

• What do you do, in one sentence, with no adjectives?
• Who is it for, specifically?
• What problem does someone have right before they call you?
• What do people ask you every single time?
• Why do customers pick you over the alternative?
• What should a visitor do next?

Most of your website is already in those answers. The writing is mostly arranging them.

The homepage

Your homepage needs to do three things in the first screen: say what you do, say who for, and offer an obvious next step.

A headline that works is usually the boring one. "Residential and commercial electrical work in Garland" beats "Powering your world." The first tells a stranger whether they are in the right place. The second tells them nothing and costs you the click.

Underneath, one short paragraph expanding on the headline. Then the action — call, book, or send a message. Everything else on the homepage is supporting material.

Delete these phrases

Every one of these appears on thousands of small business sites and communicates nothing:

• "Welcome to our website"
• "Solutions tailored to your needs"
• "We pride ourselves on quality and customer service"
• "Your one-stop shop for all your ___ needs"
• "With years of experience in the industry"
• "We go above and beyond"

The test: could a competitor put the same sentence on their site without changing a word? If yes, it is not saying anything. "We answer the phone before 7am and can usually be there the same day" passes the test. "We go above and beyond" does not.

Service pages

One page per service, and each one answers the questions a customer actually has:

• What exactly is included?
• What does it cost, or what does it depend on?
• How long does it take?
• What do I need to do or prepare?
• What happens if something goes wrong?
• How do I start?

Write it the way you would explain it on the phone. If you find yourself typing "utilize," you have drifted into brochure mode — go back and write what you would actually say.

This plain-language approach is also better for search, because the words customers type are the words you are now using. That is most of what local SEO comes down to.

The About page

The About page is not your autobiography. Its job is to make a stranger comfortable hiring you.

What belongs: how long you have been doing this, what you did before, why you started, who is on the team, any credentials or licenses, and something specific enough to be human. What does not belong: your mission statement, your values as a bulleted list, and the phrase "founded on a simple idea."

Two honest paragraphs and a real photo will do more than a page of corporate history.

If you would be embarrassed to say a sentence out loud to a customer, do not put it on your website.

Pricing, if you publish it

Publishing prices filters out people who were never going to hire you and builds trust with the ones who will. If your work varies too much for fixed prices, publish the range and the factors that move it. "Most kitchens run $4,000 to $9,000 depending on cabinet count and whether we are moving plumbing" is more useful than "contact us for a quote."

If you genuinely cannot publish numbers, say why in one sentence. Silence reads as evasion.

Two editing passes that fix most drafts

Pass one: cut every sentence that survives deletion. Read each sentence and ask whether removing it changes what the reader knows. If not, remove it. Most first drafts lose a third of their length this way and improve.

Pass two: read it aloud. Anywhere you stumble, the sentence is too long or too formal. Rewrite it as you would say it. This single habit fixes more bad copy than any writing advice.

A shortcut worth using

Open your email or messages and find the last five times you explained your service to a customer. You already wrote your website copy — it is sitting in your sent folder, in exactly the plain language that works. Paste it in and tidy it up.

Once the words are right, the rest is layout. And if the words are wrong, no amount of design fixes it — which is why content is the thing that delays most website projects.