Introduction
You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to collect missed opportunities when your website copywriting is not up to par.
In fact, I can often draw a straight line between the pain points of an organization and the quality of the website copy.
No, I don’t have special superpowers. Rather, I understand that all target audiences, no matter how different they are, universally want one thing:
Trust.
Your target audience wants to trust your organization.
The search query led them to your website for a reason. So, when they arrive on your website, they are looking for reasons and opportunities to trust your organization. The decision happens much faster than you think.
According to 8Ways Media, “It takes 1/10th of a second to form a first impression of someone, and about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for people to form an opinion about your website.”
If you want to make a positive impression on visitors to your website, every part of it has to be intentional, to-the-point, relevant and useful to visitors. What that means is that, in addition to colours, buttons and overall graphic design, text is very important.
Text should be relevant, clear, concise and interesting. When you display or present text in a way that doesn’t reach your target audience, then you miss many great opportunities.
Missed opportunities as a result of not-so-great copywriting suck.
If the copy is not up to par, it will not reach your target audience.
No one likes text that is too hard to skim and scan. If your website copy is too long, people probably won’t read it because they can’t scan it for the information they actually need.
Similarly, if the copy is unclear, people may give up reading midway. If it isn’t consistent, people may just leave the website all together. All of these scenarios amount to missed opportunities from copywriting that could have supported larger organizational goals.
In my last blog post, I touched on this very point via a deep dive into strategic communications regarding the Imagine Canada funding chart. Oftentimes, strategy gets forgotten or misunderstood in discussions about the importance of communications. So, when communications tactics and plans don’t work out, this is no more apparent.
With this blog post, I want to expand on that some more demonstrate exactly how easily these missed opportunities from copywriting arise.
Missed opportunity #1: Brand awareness
Nonprofit organizations tend to collect missed opportunities to raise brand awareness because of not-so-great website copywriting.
How does this happen?
Simple: Website copy that centres on the organization’s brand rather than the customer.
Let’s say you’ve written this amazing story about how your organization came to be. You write about your educational achievements, failures, successes and eventual pursuit of the dream that is now your organization. The story is inspiring in every way. But there’s one problem with it:
It’s all about your organization.
That doesn’t seem like an issue. But trust me, it is.
Why don’t these “all-about-me” stories work?
People love stories for many reasons, namely because they love to see themselves in them. In writing, I call these “entry points” because great writing should allow readers to enter the story and stay there to better understand it. Without entry points, people are likely to leave a webpage or the entire site all together with the impression that they aren’t the target audience.
So, if you’ve written a story about your organization and how it’s so great, you’ve missed an opportunity to relate to your target audience and increase brand awareness.
Instead of writing only about how great your organization is, include some entry points. Set the scene for your target audience. Tell them what you do and how you came to doing that work. Let them know why this work matters to you in a language that they understand. This is how your audience becomes aware of your brand and what it represents.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
Breakdown: Special Compass’ brand story
I used the Special Compass example in my previous blog post. I want to expand on it.
In this brand story, there are clear entry points I’ve underlined in green. For example, many parents can relate to how quickly their lives change when they learn of their child’s learning disability. They can also relate to the challenges of accessing resources and support.
Additionally, there is a clear journey that the founder has taken that led them to Special Compass. I’ve marked this journey with arrows and short descriptions, but allow me to expand a bit more using Shopify’s brand storytelling elements:
Brand story elements
Setting the scene: The first paragraph invites people to relate to a specific experience. The second paragraph introduces expands on that. From these two paragraphs, we know the character (Shakira), setting (Ontario special education school system) and a bit about why Special Compass exists (personal experience navigating having a learning disability).
NOTE: We also know what work the founder does. Believe it or not, many organizations forget to tell people what they actually do in clear language. This results in copywriting that demonstrates many missed opportunities!
Conflict and rising action: No one helped Shakira understand her learning disability so she believed that her learning disability was a problem she needed to solve (conflict). As a result, she fell through the gaps of the education system over and over again (rising action).
Climax and resolution: Through school, Shakira realized that her learning disability was not the problem (climax) but rather a lack of support. That is what led her to creating Special Compass and helping other people, especially those with her experience, feel more confident in who they are (resolution).
By crafting a story that has entry points for the target audience, I helped position Special Compass to draw in a wider audience and strengthen their positioning with the audience they already have. Let’s be clear: It’s not that your organization will get increased brand awareness overnight. It means that there are more opportunities for it because of the way you present your copy.
Missed opportunity#2: Potential clients
Nonprofit organizations collect missed opportunities to gain potential clients because of not-so-great website copywriting.
How does this happen?
Simple: The website copy has grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes.
Let’ say you’ve got freshly made website copy about your programs and services. You’ve got accurate descriptions that are clear and concise. Perhaps your analytics show that you’ve got more website traffic. However, the average website session duration is low.
There can be numerous reasons for this. However, I want to focus in on one big one.
Grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes are costly
Look, we all make these kinds of mistakes every single day. I’m a copywriter and there are surely pages on my website that have some sort of grammar mistake. I’m sure of it! It happens and it’s okay if these mistakes are few and far between (but you should still fix them if you come across them). When it becomes a problem, however, is when it is a frequent feature of your website copy.
Grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes suggest something is wrong on your website or that it can’t be trusted anymore.
Think about this: What is a big telltale sign that an email or a website is fake?
You guessed it: Grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes.
If these are frequently found on your website, it’s a huge and unfortunately valid reason for people to leave your website quickly and never come back. No one wants to risk their entire computer and data for a visit to your website. It sounds outlandish to make such a decision, but that’s how serious it can get.
People might believe your website is hacked
You’re probably familiar with the term “phishing“, which describes a type of attack that includes deceptive methods for the purposes of stealing your personal information, including your identity, via email and websites.
Also, it was just a few years ago that NBC published a story about the rise of typosquatting, which is when hackers “squat” (read: register) on an incorrectly spelled domains hoping that someone will enter personal information that they can steal.
Can you imagine your website traffic dropping drastically because people now believe that it has been hacked when it really just needs editing? That is an extremely costly mistake no one wants to make!
Make sure that whatever you put on your website is thoroughly edited and proofread. The last thing you need is the additional task of convincing your target audience that your website is not hacked.
Breakdown: Toronto Fringe EDI Audit Report
A few years ago, I edited an EDI report for Toronto Fringe via BIPOC Executive Search. While I was editing for spelling and grammar, I was also tasked with editing for clarity, readability and accessibility, by extension. I used line editing and copyediting to create a professional-looking and sounding report.
This report lives on the Toronto Fringe website as a living document that describes the EDI work that the organization has done. Therefore, it’s necessary for it to be professional. Otherwise, the organization would’ve sent a totally different message to their key stakeholders.
Messages are important.
Key messaging is very important.
I write about key messaging a lot in relation to plans and strategies. However, key messaging is important here as well.
Key messaging is all about specificity and intention. It describes what you want your audience to know, understand and then associate with your organization. For example, a key message that I have throughout my website is the importance of stories. So, I ensure that I weave it into everything I write.
But key messaging is not just about the message itself. It’s about how the message is presented. The most effective key messaging is that which aligns well with a brand. The alignment happens when the voice, tone and word choices of your brand match your message.
However, none of that matters if you’ve got a bunch of grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes abound, or if your website copy has a tone or voice that your audience can’t understand.
This is what I hope I communicated in my previous blog post about Imagine Canada’s funding chart. Without clear communications, especially strategic communications, you risk inconsistencies that are costly to your organization.
Grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes create inconsistencies in your key messaging, which increases the likelihood of just reaching the wrong people. But even before that, these kinds of mistakes end up informing your general communications efforts and end products, which makes the problem of inconsistency worse and more expensive to solve.
Over to you
I wrote this in the beginning, but I will write it again:
People want to trust your organization. They really do!
When people come to your website, they are looking to solve problems and find answers. And you want your answers to be professional, concise, practical and in a language that your target audience understands. Otherwise, you run the risk of collecting missed opportunities because of copywriting mistakes instead of good opportunities to better meet your organizational goals.
Consider this: According to the Neilsen Norman Group, the average page visit is less than a minute long. That means that by the time a visitor has formed a first impression of your website – and by extension, your organization – they are still gathering information to make the decision to stay or leave.
Give them information that will gain beneficial opportunities for you.