Website Copy That Works: What to Actually Say

Most local business websites get the software and the layout sorted first. The words go in last, dashed off into whatever boxes are left over. Website copy that works does the opposite. It starts from the one question a stranger actually has, whether you are the right business to ring, and answers it before the design gets a chance to distract from that. None of what follows needs cleverness. It needs to say who you are, what you do and where, in the first sentence someone reads, not the fifth.

What should the first screen of your homepage actually say?

Your trade, your area and the job you actually do. All in one line, before anyone scrolls. "Local, reliable, professional" tells a visitor nothing a hundred other sites are not also claiming. "Emergency plumber covering Leeds and the surrounding villages" tells them exactly what to do next. If someone glanced at your homepage for eight seconds and then looked away, that first line is the only thing they would carry with them. It earns the words that matter, not the words that sound impressive.

Website copy that works: plain words over clever ones

This is not a matter of taste. GOV.UK's own guidance on clear language states plainly that plain English is mandatory across everything it publishes, and gives practical rules behind that: split up any sentence over 25 words, and watch for words ending in "-ion" and "-ment", because they tend to make a sentence longer and harder to follow before you have noticed why. None of it was written with a plumber's website in mind. It was written for anyone whose reader is busy, and would rather understand the page first time than the second.

The same guidance makes a point worth borrowing directly: explain a specialist term the first time you use it, rather than assuming the reader already knows it. A customer reading about a "consumer unit" or a "scale and polish" has not necessarily met the term before, and a website that explains it in passing, rather than skipping past it, reads as written for them rather than for another tradesperson.

Why does "get a free quote" work better than "submit"?

Because it says what actually happens next, in the reader's own words, rather than in the form's. "Submit" describes what the button does to the form. "Get a free quote" describes what happens to the person who clicked it. The same logic applies to every button and heading on the page: write it from the reader's side of the screen, not the system's, and swap out anything that reads like it was written for the software rather than the customer.

What actually belongs on the page, and what to cut?

A homepage does not need to say everything. It needs to say the handful of things that actually change whether someone rings.

• Trade, area and speed. What you do, where you cover, and roughly how quickly you can get to someone, in the first section, not buried in an About page.
• A plain list of what you offer. Named services in a customer's own words, not a paragraph they have to read twice to extract them from.
• An honest sense of cost. Even a range, hedged, beats total silence. A visitor who cannot find any sense of price assumes the worst and rings the next name down the list instead.
• One clear next step. A single phone number or form, said the same way more than once on the page, not three different calls to action competing for the click.

Cut the rest. A paragraph about company values that could sit on any website in the country is not doing the reader's job for them. It is filling space. A page with less on it is usually the one that gets read to the end.

Should your words match what customers search, or what you call it yourself?

Both, ideally, checked against each other rather than assumed to be the same thing. GOV.UK's guidance makes exactly this point when it asks writers to consider whether their audience searches for "heavy goods vehicle" or "lorry", and to write in whichever term that audience actually uses. A trade has its own version of the same gap: what you call the job on the invoice is not always what the customer typed into Google to find you. Write the page the way you would explain the job to the customer standing in front of you, then check that the word they would have searched for still appears somewhere on it.

Should you write it yourself, or get help?

Plenty of business owners can write their own homepage perfectly well once they stop trying to sound like a brochure. The rules above cost nothing and take an evening: short sentences, the trade and the town up front, one clear next step. Where it is worth paying for help is when you have rewritten the same page five times and it still is not right, or when the words need to sit inside a proper structure, headings, an FAQ section, a working contact form, rather than a single block of text. If you are getting a quote for that kind of help, our guide to what a website quote should include covers what a fair one itemises before you sign anything.

We write to the same plain-English standard on every site we render, because a page nobody can read quickly does not earn the click regardless of how it looks. Have a look at what we have rendered for other local businesses to see it in practice, or start the form and preview your own words on a finished site before anything is owed.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to hire a copywriter for a small business website?

Usually not. A copywriter earns their fee on a page you have rewritten five times and still cannot look at, or one where the wrong word genuinely costs a sale. For a trade or a shop, the plain truth about what you do, who you serve and what it costs beats a clever paragraph almost every time, and that part you can write yourself.

How long should my homepage copy actually be?

Shorter than feels natural. Someone reading on a phone between jobs is not going to read a page the way they would read a letter. Say the essential thing in the first sentence, then let the rest of the page back it up for whoever wants more.

Can I put a customer testimonial on my website?

Yes, if it's real and you have their permission to use it. A genuine line from an actual customer, with their name or initials attached, does more work than an invented one ever could, and it is worth asking for one the day a job finishes while they are still pleased.

What if I genuinely don't know what to write?

Start with the questions customers already ask you on the phone before they book. What do you cover, how much does it usually run to, how fast can you get out. Write down the answer you actually give, in the words you actually use, and that is most of a homepage already done.

Should my website use the words customers search for, or the words I use myself?

Ideally the same words, checked against each other. Trade terms and search terms do not always match, an electrician might say "consumer unit" where a customer types "fuse box", so it is worth writing the way you would explain it to that customer in person, then checking the phrase they would actually type still appears somewhere on the page.