Why copy stalls every project
Business owners can talk about their work for an hour without pausing. Ask them to write three paragraphs for the home page and nothing happens for a month. Writing feels like a different skill, the blank page is intimidating, and it always gets pushed behind actual customers.
The method below gets round the blank page entirely. You never write from nothing. You talk, then you edit.
Step one: record a conversation
Get someone to ask you the eight questions below and record it on your phone. A friend, a partner, us on the kick-off call. Not a customer; you will be too polite. Talk as you would to a new client across the desk. Do not prepare. Forty minutes is plenty.
Then run the recording through any transcription tool. You now have several thousand words of you, in your own voice, describing your business. That is the raw material. Nobody has to write anything from scratch.
The eight questions
- Who calls you, and what has just happened to them? Not "small businesses" or "local families". The actual moment: the tooth that hurts, the boiler that stopped, the wedding in six months, the dog that will not walk on a lead.
- What do they usually get wrong or worry about before they call? The misconception, the fear, the thing they apologise for.
- What happens from the first call to the finished job? Walk through it. Every step you take for granted is something a new client does not know.
- What do you do differently from the others, honestly? Not "we care". The specific thing: the same person every visit, the fixed quote, the Saturday appointments, the follow-up call.
- What does it cost and why? Say the real numbers out loud, and the reasons behind them.
- What do clients say afterwards? Repeat the actual sentences you hear, in their words.
- Who is not a good fit for you? Who should you send elsewhere?
- What would you want someone to know before they book? The thing you find yourself saying on every first call.
Step two: sort the transcript into pages
Print the transcript or open it beside a blank document. Read through and mark each paragraph with the page it belongs to:
- Questions 1, 2 and 4 are your home page: who you help, what they are worried about, why you.
- Question 3 is your process section or how it works page.
- Question 5 is your pricing page or the pricing section on each service.
- Question 6 is your testimonials, once you have checked with the clients.
- Question 7 and 8 are your FAQ, and often your best copy.
- The bits about you, why you started, what you did before, are the about page.
Copy and paste each marked paragraph under its page heading. You now have rough copy for every page, in your voice, with no writing done yet.
Step three: edit, do not write
Now the editing, which is easier than writing because the material exists.
Cut everything that is not for the reader. The tangents, the "um, so basically", the repetition. Aim to lose half.
Turn "I" into "you" where it fits. "I always call the day before" becomes "We call you the day before". The reader is the subject of the site, not you.
Keep the sentences that sound like speech. "Most people leave it too long" is better copy than "Timely intervention is recommended". The transcript is full of the first kind; do not polish them into the second.
Put the answer first. Every page should say in its first sentence what it is about and who it is for. Move that sentence up from wherever it landed in the transcript.
One call to action per page. Book, call, or enquire. Say it in the same words on every page.
Step four: read it on a phone
Paste the copy into a note on your phone and read each page. Anything that runs longer than a screen without a heading needs one. Anything you skim, cut. Anything that makes you want to explain more is a sentence to add.
What you will end up with
Copy that sounds like you on your best day with a client, which is exactly what a website should sound like. Not marketing copy. Not a template. Your explanations, tidied.
It takes an afternoon: forty minutes talking, an hour sorting, two hours editing. Compare that to the month of nothing.
When we write it instead
If you would rather not, we run the same conversation on the kick-off call and do steps two to four for you. It is included in most website projects, and the copy still sounds like you because it is you, transcribed and edited. Either way, the site does not wait on a blank page.