Website Copywriting
10 Website Copy Mistakes We See During Website Redesigns
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Marketing
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10 Website Copy Mistakes We See During Website Redesigns
When companies start planning a website redesign, it’s easy to obsess over how the new site will look and work.
What should the navigation look like? How should pages be structured? What functionality do we need? Which colors, layouts, and animations will make the site feel fresh?
Meanwhile, copy often gets pushed to the bottom of the list.
We’ll figure out what the website says later.
There’s just one problem: copy isn’t filler.
You can build a beautiful website with slick animations and an intuitive user experience, but if visitors can’t quickly understand what you do, why it matters, and why they should choose you, good design can only do so much.
Your website copy has a pretty big job. It communicates your value, separates you from competitors, gives search engines context about your business, and helps potential customers decide whether you’re the right fit.
Most importantly, it gives people a reason to take the next step.
And that’s why copy shouldn’t be something you pour into a finished design. It should help shape the website from the beginning.
After working through website redesigns with hundreds of companies across dozens of industries, we’ve noticed the same website content mistakes showing up again and again.
And surprisingly, most of them happen before anyone starts writing.
Here are the website copy mistakes we see most often during redesigns, why they cause problems, and what your team can do differently.
Mistake #1: Writing Website Copy Before You Have a Strategy
It’s tempting to start a website redesign by opening a blank document, creating a list of pages, and getting to work.
Homepage. About. Services. Contact. Go.
But before you decide what goes on each page, you need to answer some bigger questions.
Who are you trying to reach? What do they need to hear? What makes you different? And how should your brand communicate those ideas?
Otherwise, you’re not really creating a website content strategy. You’re filling pages.
A website content strategy defines what your website needs to communicate, who it needs to reach, where that information belongs, and how each page supports the customer journey and your business goals.
Define Your Brand Voice Before You Start Writing
Your website shouldn’t sound polished and professional on the homepage, quirky on your About page, and like it was written by your legal department everywhere else.
A defined brand voice gives everyone contributing to your website the same set of guardrails.
Document the vocabulary, sentence structure, personality, terminology, and editorial rules that make your copy sound like it came from the same company.
That becomes especially important when multiple writers, departments, or outside partners are involved. Instead of reinventing your brand every time someone writes a page, everyone has a clear standard to work from.
Create a Brand Script That Defines What You Actually Want to Say
If your brand voice determines how you communicate, your brand script determines what you communicate.
Before writing individual pages, get clear on the bigger story.
Who are you trying to reach? What problems are they dealing with? How do you solve them? What makes your approach different? What objections could prevent someone from choosing you? What does success look like after working with you?
Those answers become the foundation for your website messaging.
Without them, teams tend to create content one page at a time. The homepage says one thing. A service page emphasizes something else. The About page introduces three completely new ideas.
A brand script gives every page a role in the same larger story.
The goal isn’t to repeat the same message everywhere. It’s to make sure every page reinforces the same positioning, value, and reason to believe.
The takeaway: Don’t start your website content strategy with pages. Define how your brand sounds and the story you need to tell first.
Mistake #2: Writing What Your Company Wants to Say Instead of What Customers Need to Know
Website redesigns attract a lot of internal requests.
Sales wants to highlight a specific feature. Leadership wants the company history front and center. Product Development wants more technical details. Public Relations wants everyone to know about that award from three years ago.
Individually, those requests might make sense. Put them all together, though, and you can end up with a website built around your company’s priorities instead of your customers’.
Your visitors have a much simpler agenda:
- Am I in the right place?
- Do you understand my problem?
- Can you solve it?
- Why should I choose you?
- Can I trust you?
- What should I do next?
Good website copy makes those answers easy to find.
Instead of asking, “What do we want to say on this page?” ask, “What does our customer need to know at this point in their decision?”
That shift changes what makes the cut.
Build Content Around the Customer Journey
Not every visitor arrives ready to talk to sales.
Someone early in their research may need help understanding their problem. Someone comparing solutions needs clear benefits and differentiators. Someone close to making a decision may want case studies, pricing, FAQs, or answers to common objections.
Give each page a job based on where that visitor is in the decision-making process.
Once you understand why someone is on a page, it becomes much easier to decide what belongs there and what doesn’t.
Stop Guessing What Customers Care About
You don’t have to invent those priorities from scratch.
Your customers have probably already told you what matters.
Talk to your best customers. Interview your sales team. Review sales calls. Look at recurring questions, objections, search terms, and the language prospects use to describe their problems.
Those insights are far more useful than a conference room full of people debating whether “innovative solutions” belongs in the hero section.
They also help you decide what to leave out.
Your team knows a lot about your company, products, services, and industry. That expertise matters, but your website doesn’t need to communicate all of it at once.
Prioritize the information customers need to understand your value and make a decision. Give them more detail when it helps. Leave it out when it doesn’t.
The takeaway: Don’t build your website around everything your company wants to say. Build it around what customers need to know to confidently take the next step.
Mistake #3: Letting Too Many Cooks Into the Copy Kitchen
Website redesigns tend to attract a lot of opinions.
Marketing writes the homepage. Sales weighs in on service pages. Product teams handle features. Subject matter experts contribute technical details. Leadership makes edits. Your agency fills in the gaps.
By the end, plenty of smart people have contributed to the website.
Unfortunately, it can also sound like plenty of smart people contributed to the website.
Having multiple writers isn’t inherently a problem. In fact, you often need input from different teams to create accurate, useful content.
The problem is giving everyone a blank page and hoping it all comes together in the end.
Without shared direction, inconsistencies pile up quickly. Teams use different terminology for the same service. Tone changes from page to page. Value propositions get rewritten. Claims become inconsistent. Calls to action multiply. Even small things like capitalization, formatting, and naming conventions start to drift.
The more people involved, the easier it is for your website to become a collection of individual contributions instead of one cohesive experience.
Before you divide up the writing, establish a single source of truth.
Document your voice and tone, core messaging, approved terminology, value propositions, differentiators, CTA conventions, and editorial rules. Then make sure everyone contributing to the website is working from it.
You still get the expertise of multiple teams without making your visitors feel like they’re meeting a new brand on every page.
Use a Branded AI Agent to Keep Everyone on the Same Page
Of course, having brand guidelines and getting everyone to reference them consistently are two different things.
This is one area where AI can actually make the content writing process easier.
Instead of giving your team a generic AI writing tool and asking it to “make this sound better,” you can create a branded AI copywriting agent grounded in your actual content strategy. Think of it like having a professional content writer in your back pocket!
Give it your voice and tone guidelines, customer personas, brand script, differentiators, approved terminology, editorial standards, and SEO priorities. Now everyone contributing to the website has access to the same baseline.
A product expert can provide technical knowledge. Sales can provide the objections they hear every day. Marketing can provide campaign and customer insights. The AI agent can help turn those inputs into copy that follows the same messaging and writing standards across the site.
That doesn’t mean handing your website over to AI and calling it a day.
Web content writers still need to bring judgment, expertise, context, and a healthy amount of editing. AI is there to help maintain consistency, not make strategic decisions for you.
Think of a branded AI agent as an extension of your marketing team. When it’s grounded in real brand strategy, it can help more people create on-brand content without requiring someone to police every sentence manually.
The takeaway: More contributors don’t have to mean more inconsistency. Give everyone the same rules, tools, and source of truth before they start writing.
Mistake #4: Treating SEO Like Something You Add After the Copy Is Written
A lot of teams treat SEO like the final coat of paint.
The website copy gets written, reviewed, and approved. Then someone pulls up a keyword list and starts looking for places to squeeze those phrases into the finished product.
At that point, you’re not really doing SEO strategy. You’re playing keyword Tetris.
SEO research should happen before you start drafting because it can answer a much more important question than “Where should we put this keyword?
It can help determine what content your website needs in the first place.
Let Search Intent Shape Your Content Strategy
Keyword research gives you a window into what potential customers are looking for, the questions they’re asking, and the language they use to describe their problems.
Just as importantly, it helps you understand search intent.
Someone researching a broad problem needs different information than someone searching for a specific service. Understanding that difference helps you determine which topics deserve dedicated pages, what belongs in supporting content, and what each page needs to accomplish.
It can also expose gaps in your sitemap.
Maybe there’s meaningful demand for a service you planned to bury halfway down another page. Maybe customers use completely different terminology than your internal team. Or maybe they’re searching for questions your content plan doesn’t address at all.
Finding those relevant keyword opportunities before you write is a lot easier than rebuilding your content strategy after every page has been approved.
Give Every Page a Clear SEO Job
Once you understand what your audience is searching for, map relevant topics and keywords to individual pages.
That gives writers clearer direction and helps prevent multiple pages from competing for the same search intent. It also makes it easier to spot important topics that don’t have a logical home anywhere on the site.
From there, your pages can work together instead of acting like islands. Service pages can support related services. Educational content can point visitors toward solutions. Internal links can reinforce the topics that matter most to your customers and your business.
Then, when it’s time to write, use keywords naturally in headings, body copy, title tags, meta descriptions, FAQs, links, and other relevant page elements.
Search data should guide the content. It shouldn’t dictate every sentence
The takeaway: Bring SEO into your website content strategy before you start writing. Use it to determine what content you need, what each page should accomplish, and how those pages should work together.
Mistake #5: Ignoring How AI Search Understands Your Website
Your website has always needed to communicate with customers and search engines.
Now there’s another audience to consider.
People increasingly use AI-powered search experiences and assistants to research problems, compare options, understand unfamiliar topics, and discover companies that might be able to help.
That means your content doesn’t just need to rank on a Google search. It needs to be easy for AI systems to understand, interpret, and potentially reference.
This is where generative engine optimization (GEO), comes into the picture.
Make Your Expertise Easy to Understand and Extract
The good news is that optimizing content for AI doesn’t require writing like a robot.
Most of the things that make content useful to people also make it easier for machines to understand.
Use descriptive headings. Answer important questions directly. Clearly explain who you serve, what you offer, what problems you solve, and how your expertise connects to the topic you’re discussing.
And give your content some substance.
Original insights, detailed explanations, examples, case studies, data, and firsthand experience provide more value than another generic article saying the same thing as everyone else.
Clarity matters, too. Clever headlines, vague marketing language, and unexplained internal terminology can make your content harder for humans and AI systems to understand.
Don’t Chase GEO Hacks
Whenever a new way of finding information emerges, marketers start looking for shortcuts.
Resist the urge.
GEO isn’t an excuse to stuff pages with awkward questions, manufacture hundreds of thin articles, or restructure your website around whatever search engine optimization trick is making the rounds this week.
The better goal is simple: make your expertise easy to find, understand, and use.
Answer real customer questions. Organize information logically. Establish clear context around your company, services, and expertise. Use natural language. Provide information worth referencing.
SEO and GEO aren’t identical, but they share an important foundation: understand what people are looking for and provide a clear, credible answer.
The takeaway: Make your expertise easy to understand and extract. Clear structure, direct answers, useful information, and original expertise serve humans, search engines, and AI systems alike.
Mistake #6: Writing for Search Engines Instead of Actual Humans
Optimization has a limit.
You’ve seen what happens when teams blow past it.
The same keyword appears six times in three paragraphs. An exact-match phrase gets wedged into a sentence no normal person would say. A straightforward answer becomes 1,500 words because someone heard longer content ranks better.
Now AI has added another version of the problem: pages filled with technically correct but painfully generic copy that sounds like it could belong to anyone.
You can check every optimization box and still end up with a page nobody wants to read.
Don’t Sacrifice Clarity for Optimization
SEO and GEO should help people find your content. They shouldn’t make that content worse once someone gets there.
Use keywords when they reflect the language your customers actually use. Write enough to answer the question, explain your value, and satisfy the visitor’s intent.
Then stop.
If you can give someone the answer they need in 500 words, stretching it to 1,500 doesn’t automatically make it more useful. Usually, it just makes the useful part harder to find.
Don’t Let AI Sand Off Your Personality
AI can make writing website content faster, but faster doesn’t automatically mean better. It can also make your website sound dramatically more like everyone else’s.
Companies are “revolutionizing” industries. Products deliver “seamless solutions.” Everyone is “passionate about empowering businesses.”
You could swap the logos on half these websites and nobody would notice.
The problem isn’t using AI. It’s giving AI nothing meaningful to work with.
Ground it in your brand strategy, customer insights, differentiators, subject matter expertise, and voice guidelines. Then have an actual person review the output for clarity, accuracy, personality, and persuasion.
AI can help you get to a strong draft faster. It shouldn’t be an excuse to publish the first draft faster.
The takeaway: Optimize your content to get found, then write it for the person who finds it. Clear, useful, distinctive copy gives them a reason to stick around and take the next step.
Mistake #7: Assuming Your Customers Speak Your Language
Spend enough time inside any industry and its vocabulary starts to feel normal.
Acronyms need no explanation. Technical terminology becomes shorthand. Internal product names make perfect sense. Everyone on your team knows exactly what you mean.
Your customers might not.
Even in complex B2B industries, the person visiting your website may not have the same level of expertise as your subject matter experts. And if understanding your website requires a glossary, you’re creating unnecessary work for them.
Every unfamiliar acronym or unexplained technical term introduces a little friction. One probably won’t lose the sale. Stack enough of them together, though, and your message becomes harder to understand than it needs to be.
Clear Doesn’t Mean Dumbed Down
This doesn’t mean stripping technical terminology from your website.
Sometimes the technical term is the right term. Your audience may expect it, it may carry an important distinction, or there simply may not be a better alternative.
Use it. Just make sure you explain what it means and why your customer should care.
The goal isn’t to make complex products or services sound simple when they aren’t. It’s to make them easier to understand.
For example:
Instead of this → “Our proprietary API orchestration layer facilitates interoperability across disparate enterprise systems.”
Try this → “Connect your existing systems through a single API, so your teams can share data without rebuilding the tools they already use.”
The second version doesn’t remove the substance. It translates that substance into something a customer can understand and connect to a practical benefit.
That’s an important distinction.
Don’t Confuse Sophistication With Complexity
There’s a persistent idea in B2B marketing that sounding more complicated makes a company sound more sophisticated.
Usually, it does the opposite.
Clear writing demonstrates that you understand your subject well enough to explain it without hiding behind jargon. It helps customers grasp your value faster and gives them fewer opportunities to misunderstand what you offer.
That’s especially important on a website, where nobody is obligated to stick around until your message finally makes sense.
Before approving your copy, ask yourself whether your customers actually use the language you’re using. Better yet, go back to customer interviews, sales calls, search data, and support questions to see how they describe the problem themselves.
Speak their language first. Introduce yours when it helps.
The takeaway: Expertise should make your message clearer, not more complicated. Don’t make customers decode your website just to understand why they should work with you.
Mistake #8: Thinking More Copy = Better Copy
How much copy should a website page have?
Enough.
We know. Incredibly helpful.
But there isn’t a magic word count that makes a page more persuasive or more likely to convert.
Some teams try to explain everything. Others cut until there’s barely anything left besides a clever headline and a button.
Neither approach works particularly well.
Too Much Copy Buries the Good Stuff
Long walls of text, repetitive messaging, and unnecessary detail make visitors work harder to find what matters.
That doesn’t mean long-form web copy is bad. Complex products, services, and buying decisions often require more explanation.
The problem is length without purpose.
If three paragraphs make the same point, you probably need one. If a technical detail doesn’t help someone understand your value or make a decision, it may belong somewhere else.
Editing isn’t about making copy short. It’s about making the important stuff easier to find.
Too Little Copy Leaves Customers With Questions
“Keep it concise” can go too far, too.
A vague headline, two sentences, and some high-quality images might look great in a design review. But if visitors still don’t understand what you do, the web page hasn’t done its job.
“Transform Your Tomorrow” might sound nice. It just doesn’t tell anyone much.
Give visitors enough substance to understand what you offer, why it matters, why they should believe you, and what they should do next.
White space is useful. Mystery, less so.
Focus on the Right Amount of Copy
A better rule is simple: The right amount of website copy is the amount someone needs to understand, trust, and take the next step.
That amount changes from page to page.
A homepage needs to communicate your big-picture value quickly. A complex service page may need more depth. A case study needs enough detail to make the result credible. A contact page probably doesn’t need your company manifesto.
Whatever the length, make it easy to scan.
Use descriptive headings. Keep paragraphs focused. Use bullets when they improve comprehension. Put proof near important claims. Give calls to action room to stand out.
The goal isn’t more copy or less copy. It’s enough of the right copy.
The takeaway: Give people the information they need to understand your value and move forward, then cut anything that gets in the way.
Mistake #9: Writing Copy Without Considering the Design
Here’s a website redesign workflow we’d love to retire:
Design the page with placeholder copy. Get everyone excited about how it looks. Replace the "lorem ipsum" placeholder text with actual content. Realize the actual content doesn’t fit. Start cutting sentences until it does.
Great way to fill a box. Not a great way to communicate your value.
Copy and design shouldn’t happen in isolation because they’re both responsible for telling the same story.
The words determine what you need to communicate. The design determines how people experience that information.
They need to work together.
Let Content Inform the Design
Copy has a direct impact on how a page should be designed.
A complex service might require more explanation, supporting proof, FAQs, and multiple opportunities to take action. A straightforward product might need much less. A strong customer testimonial deserves different visual treatment than a technical product detail.
Designers need to understand those priorities before they start creating layouts.
What’s the most important message on the page? What should someone notice first? Which information supports the main argument? Where does the visitor need proof? What action should they take next?
Those decisions shape visual hierarchy.
When designers understand the purpose and priority of the content, they can use layout, typography, imagery, spacing, and other visual elements to make the message easier to understand.
Writers Need to Think Visually, Too
The responsibility doesn’t fall entirely on designers.
Good web writing has to account for how people actually experience a page. Writers need to understand that website copy isn’t consumed like a Word document.
People experience it inside a layout.
They scan headlines. Jump between sections. Notice large type before small type. Look at images. Skim bullets. Read a testimonial. Scroll past something that doesn’t immediately seem relevant.
That should influence how you write.
A headline has to work as a headline, not a paragraph squeezed into 48-point type. Sections need clear ideas that can stand on their own. Supporting copy should add useful context without competing with the primary message.
Writing web content with the page experience in mind makes it easier for design to reinforce the message instead of fighting it.
Let Copy and Design Evolve Together
This doesn’t mean every sentence needs to be finalized before design begins.
It means the two processes should inform each other.
Start with enough content strategy and copy direction for designers to understand what each page needs to communicate. Then refine the words and layouts together as the page takes shape.
Sometimes seeing the design reveals that a section needs to be shorter. Sometimes the copy reveals that the design needs another section. Sometimes everyone realizes that the clever animation they loved isn’t helping tell the story and needs to go.
That back-and-forth is part of building a better website.
The goal isn’t to make the copy fit the design or make the design fit the copy.
It’s to create an experience where both work together to make the message clearer.
The takeaway: Don’t design empty boxes and figure out what to say later. Give copy and design room to evolve together so every page looks good and communicates something worth reading.
Mistake #10: Making Claims Without Proving Them
Anyone can say they’re great, and plenty of websites do.
“Industry-leading.”
“Trusted partner.”
“Proven results.”
“Best-in-class.”
“Built for enterprise.”
“Exceptional customer service.”
Maybe all of those things are true, but your website visitors don’t know that.
The problem with big marketing claims isn’t always the claim itself. It’s expecting someone to believe it simply because you put it in a large font on your homepage.
Strong website copy doesn’t just tell people why your company is worth choosing. It gives them reasons to believe you.
Turn Marketing Claims Into Evidence
The more specific you can make a claim, the more convincing it becomes.
Compare:
“Our platform helps teams work more efficiently.”
With:
“Cut monthly reporting from three days to three hours.”
The first one sounds nice. The second one gives you something to believe.
Whenever your copy makes a claim, ask yourself: How can we prove this?
Maybe it’s a measurable result. Maybe it’s a specific example. Maybe it’s a customer story, statistic, certification, or piece of data.
You don’t need a footnote after every sentence. You just need enough evidence to show visitors there’s something behind the marketing.
Put Proof Where People Need It
A lot of websites have plenty of proof. They just put it in the wrong places.
Testimonials get tucked onto a testimonials page. Case studies live three clicks away. Customer logos get dumped into a carousel near the bottom of the homepage.
Then the service page makes five big claims without backing up any of them.
Don’t make visitors go hunting for reasons to trust you.
Put proof close to the claim it supports.
If you say your implementation process is faster, show how much faster. If you say you understand healthcare, show relevant healthcare customers or case studies. If you promise measurable ROI, show an actual result.
Proof is more persuasive when it shows up at the exact moment someone starts wondering, “Okay, but can you actually do that?”
Use the Right Proof for the Claim
Not every claim needs the same kind of evidence.
Customer testimonials can show what it’s like to work with you. Case studies can demonstrate results. Recognizable customers can establish credibility. Statistics can make outcomes more concrete. Certifications, awards, and third-party validation can support expertise.
Even a detailed example can make an abstract claim feel more believable.
The goal isn’t to cram every logo, testimonial, award, and five-star review you’ve ever received onto the page.
It’s to use the proof that makes the specific claim you’re making easier to believe.
Because when someone is deciding whether to contact you, credibility isn’t a nice-to-have.
It’s part of the sale.
The takeaway: Don’t ask visitors to believe your marketing claims just because you wrote them on your website. Back them up with specific, relevant proof that makes choosing you feel like a safer decision.
What Does Good Website Copy Actually Look Like?
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what not to do. So what does good website copy actually look like?
Usually, the difference isn’t about being more clever.
It’s about being more useful.
Good website copy makes your value easier to understand, gives customers a reason to care, and provides enough substance to believe what you’re saying.
Sometimes, a few small changes can make a big difference.
Make It About the Customer
Instead of:
“We are a leading provider of innovative enterprise solutions.”
Try:
“Get the tools your team needs to work faster, reduce errors, and make better decisions.”
The first version tells visitors how the company sees itself. The second tells them what’s in it for them.
Your experience, expertise, and credentials still matter. But they should support the value you provide, not become the entire message.
Get Specific
Instead of:
“We help businesses reach their goals.”
Try:
“We help B2B companies turn more website traffic into qualified sales opportunities.”
Specificity does a lot of heavy lifting.
The second version tells visitors who you help, what you help improve, and what kind of outcome they can expect.
That makes it much easier for the right person to think, “Yep, this is for me.”
Cut the Jargon
Instead of:
“Our integrated platform enables cross-functional operational efficiencies across your organization.”
Try:
“Give your teams one place to manage their work, share information, and move projects forward.”
Both could describe the exact same product.
The difference is that one requires a second read.
Clear copy doesn’t make your company sound less sophisticated. It makes your value easier to understand.
Connect Features to Benefits
Instead of:
“Our platform includes customizable dashboards and automated reporting.”
Try:
“See what’s working, spot problems faster, and report results without spending hours in spreadsheets.”
Features tell customers what they get.
Benefits tell them why they should care.
You still need to communicate important features, especially when customers are comparing options. Just don’t make people connect the dots themselves. Show them how the feature solves a problem or creates a better outcome.
That’s what turns a product detail into a reason to buy.
These changes might look small when you see them one sentence at a time. Across an entire website, they can completely change how quickly someone understands your company and why they should choose you.
Here’s what those same principles can look like on real websites.
Building Engines: Lead With the Outcome, Then Explain the Product
Software companies have a lot of features to talk about. That doesn’t mean customers want to hear about all of them first.
Building Engines leads with a much bigger idea: “Take control of every task your building needs.”
Then the supporting copy immediately frames the problem from the customer’s perspective: “Property teams don’t need more tools. They need better results.”
That line does a lot of work.
Instead of introducing Prism Operations with a list of capabilities, the copy acknowledges something property teams are likely already feeling: another piece of software isn’t valuable just because it has more features.
The rest of the message connects the platform’s capabilities to the outcomes those teams actually care about. Automating routine work means less time spent managing repetitive tasks. Bringing teams, tenants, and vendors together makes coordination easier. Operational insights help teams make better decisions and drive stronger NOI.
The features are still there. They’re just given a reason to matter.
That’s what strong benefit-focused website copy does. It doesn’t make customers translate product functionality into business value themselves.
It connects the dots for them.
LightGauge Co.: Make Your Values Mean Something
Company values are a perfect place for website copy to drift into generic territory.
Quality. Safety. Innovation. Teamwork. Customer service.
There’s nothing wrong with those values. The problem is that nearly every company can say they have them.
For LightGauge Co., we wanted the copy to go a step further by showing visitors what those values actually look like in practice.
Take “Dedicated Partner.”
The copy doesn’t stop at the value itself:
“We show up as a true partner, not just another subcontractor. Our success is tied directly to our GC’s success.”
Then it gets even more specific. Make the partner’s job easier. Be proactive instead of reactive. Communicate early and often.
The same approach carries through the rest of the section.
“Safety First” means taking responsibility from start to finish, speaking up when there’s a problem, and protecting the people doing the work.
“Quality & Craftsmanship” means doing it right the first time, paying attention to the details, and maintaining quality even under pressure.
“Teamwork, Relationships & Culture” becomes supporting people in the field and office, respecting the work, and building leaders throughout the company.
Those details matter because anyone can put a value in a headline. Explaining the behaviors behind it makes that value feel real.
Instead of asking site visitors to take LightGauge’s values at face value, the copy gives them a clearer picture of the company they’d actually be working with.
PAYETHOS: Answer the Question Customers Are Actually Asking
Pricing pages are where vague copy gets expensive.
Someone visiting this page isn’t looking for another paragraph about how innovative your company is. They want to know what it costs, what they get, and which option makes sense for them.
PAYETHOS gets straight to it.
“A Pricing Model That Scales. A Partner That Stays.”
Then, instead of hiding the numbers behind a “Contact Sales” button, the page clearly presents two pricing models and explains who each one is designed for.
The supporting copy makes the options easier to evaluate, too. Standard pricing is positioned around predictable costs and simplified billing for growing businesses. Enterprise pricing speaks to high-volume merchants that need greater control and a model built around their transaction volume.
Even the supporting bullets focus on the questions buyers are likely asking: Are processing fees included? Is the pricing complicated? How much control will we have? What will implementation look like?
That’s an important lesson for any website.
Don’t make customers dig for information just because your company would rather talk about something else.
When someone reaches a high-intent page like pricing, give them clear answers that help them evaluate their options and confidently decide what to do next.
Greenlight: Connect Features to the Outcomes People Care About
Greenlight could describe itself as a debit card, savings account, investing platform, chore tracker, location-sharing tool, and family organization app.
Instead, the homepage translates those capabilities into outcomes families can immediately understand.
“Their money. Your guardrails.”
“Spend wisely.”
“Grow savings.”
“Build wealth.”
“Know they’re safe.”
Those headlines don’t just name features. They explain why the features matter. A debit card becomes a way for kids to learn responsible spending while parents maintain control. Investing becomes an opportunity to build financial skills. Location sharing becomes peace of mind.
Greenlight also backs up that messaging with proof: a 4.8 App Store rating with more than 440,000 reviews, 6.5 million family members, more than $700 million saved toward goals, and testimonials showing how families actually use the product.
That brings together two ideas we’ve talked about throughout this article. Connect features to benefits, then give people a reason to believe those benefits are real.
Your customers shouldn’t have to look at a list of capabilities and figure out why they should care.
Do that work for them.
Databricks: Structure Content for Humans and AI
One of the ideas we touched on earlier is that your website has more than one target audience.
You’re writing for potential customers. You’re writing for search engines. And increasingly, you’re writing for AI-powered search and assistants trying to understand your business well enough to surface it in an answer.
Databricks does a good job of serving all three.
The platform page uses clear, descriptive sections to explain the benefits, capabilities, and individual products within the Databricks ecosystem. Rather than relying on clever headlines alone, the copy repeatedly gives those ideas context: what the technology does, how it works, and why someone would use it.
But the FAQ section is especially worth paying attention to.
Databricks directly answers questions like “What is the Databricks Data and AI Platform?”, “What makes the Databricks Data and AI Platform unique?”, and “What does it mean for a data and AI platform to be open by design?”
Those are useful questions for prospective customers. They’re also exactly the kind of clearly structured, self-contained information that gives search engines and AI systems more context about what Databricks is, what makes it different, and how its technology fits into a larger category.
That’s the bigger lesson.
AI visibility isn’t about stuffing pages with awkward questions or writing for robots. It’s about making your expertise easier to understand and extract.
Answer real questions. Use descriptive headings. Explain important concepts directly. Be specific about what you do and what makes you different.
Do that well, and you’re not just making your website easier for AI to understand.
You’re making it better for humans, too.
So, How Do You Write Good Content for a Website?
If avoiding all of these mistakes sounds like a lot to keep track of, there’s a simpler way to think about it.
Good website content comes from doing things in the right order.
Start by understanding your audience and what they need to know. From there, define your strategy, give every page a purpose, and let those decisions guide the writing, optimization, and design.
Here’s the process we recommend.
1. Understand Your Audience
Before deciding what you want to say, understand what your customers need to know.
Who are you trying to reach? What problems brought them to your website? What questions do they have? What objections might hold them back? What outcomes are they trying to achieve?
Customer interviews, sales conversations, FAQs, search data, and feedback from customer-facing teams can all help you answer those questions.
2. Define Your Positioning and Brand Script
Get clear on the story you want your website to tell.
Define the problems you solve, the value you provide, what makes you different, why customers should believe you, and what success looks like after working with you.
These ideas should become the foundation for the entire website, not something you reinvent on every page.
3. Establish Your Voice and Tone
Once you know what you need to communicate, decide how your brand should communicate it.
Document your personality, vocabulary, writing style, terminology, and editorial rules. Give everyone contributing to the website the same guardrails so your brand sounds like your brand from one page to the next.
4. Build Your Website Content Strategy Alongside Your Sitemap
Now you can start thinking about pages.
Determine what information visitors need, where it belongs, and how pages should work together to move people through the site.
Your sitemap shouldn’t just reflect your internal company structure. It should reflect how your customers look for information and make decisions.
5. Research SEO Opportunities and Search Intent
Before drafting, understand what your audience is searching for and why.
Map relevant topics and keywords to the appropriate pages. Look for gaps in your content strategy, avoid having multiple pages compete for the same intent, and use search behavior to better understand the language and questions your customers use.
6. Give Every Page a Purpose
Every page should have a job.
Know who the page is for, what they need to learn, and what you want them to do next.
That might mean requesting a demo, exploring a service, reading a case study, downloading a resource, or contacting your team.
Whatever it is, decide before you start writing web copy.
7. Write for Humans First
Use your SEO and AI visibility research to inform the page, then write it for the person who actually lands there.
Answer questions directly. Explain complicated ideas clearly. Use language your customers understand. Provide useful expertise. Make your differentiators specific.
Optimize the page for search results. Write the page for the person who discovers it.
8. Edit for Clarity, Consistency, and Conversion
A first draft is just that.
Remove repetition. Simplify jargon. Check terminology. Strengthen vague claims. Make important information easy to scan. Add proof where it’s needed. Make sure calls to action are clear and consistent.
Then ask the most important question: Does this page give someone what they need to confidently take the next step?
9. Review Copy and Design Together
Finally, stop reviewing website copy exclusively inside a document.
Read it in the actual design.
Look at what gets noticed first, where important information gets buried, whether sections feel too long or too thin, and how the copy works alongside imagery, typography, layout, and calls to action.
The page needs to work as an experience, not just as a collection of well-written sentences.
Creating good website content isn’t about finding the perfect headline formula or hitting the right word count.
It’s about understanding your customers, building a clear strategy, and making hundreds of small decisions that help people understand your value and move forward.
Get the strategy right first, and the writing gets a whole lot easier.
What Information Should Be on a Website?
There’s no universal checklist of information that belongs on every website.
A SaaS company selling a complex platform has different content needs than a professional services firm. A visitor comparing vendors needs different information than someone encountering your brand for the first time.
That said, most effective websites need some combination of:
- Clear positioning and a value proposition that quickly explains what you offer and why it matters
- Your customers’ problems and the outcomes you can help them achiev
- Products, services, or solutions with enough detail to understand what they are and who they’re for
- Differentiators that give people a reason to choose you over the alternatives
- Proof through case studies, testimonials, results, data, or other credibility signals
- Company information that establishes relevant experience and expertise
- Educational resources that help customers understand their problems and evaluate potential solutions
- FAQs that answer common questions and address objections
- Clear calls to action that tell visitors what to do next
Not every visitor needs all of that information at once. That’s where your website content strategy, sitemap, and customer journey come together.
The goal isn’t to put everything your company knows on the website. It’s to give each visitor the information they need to confidently take the next step.
Sometimes that means adding more.
Sometimes it means having the discipline to leave something out.
Good Website Copy Starts Before You Start Writing
A website redesign is an opportunity to rethink a lot more than colors, layouts, and navigation.
It’s an opportunity to get clearer about what your company actually needs to say, who you’re saying it to, and what information people need to choose you.
That’s why the biggest website copy mistakes usually happen before anyone starts writing content.
Teams skip the strategy. They start filling pages. Messaging gets developed in pieces. SEO gets bolted on later. Design and copy move in separate directions. And eventually, everyone wonders why the new website looks better but still struggles to communicate what makes the company worth choosing.
Good website copy starts by getting the foundation right.
Understand your customers. Clarify your positioning. Define your message and voice. Use search behavior to understand what people are looking for. Build content around the customer journey. Then bring copy, UX, SEO, and design together to create an experience that makes your value easy to understand.
Because a successful website redesign shouldn’t just give you a nicer-looking website.
It should give you a better tool for growing your business.
Website Improvement Plan
Ready to build a website where the words work just as hard as the design?
At Huemor, strategy, copy, SEO, UX, design, and development are all part of the same website redesign process. We bring them together from the start so your website doesn’t just look the part. It communicates clearly, gets found, and gives the right people a reason to take action.
Frequently Asked Questions About Website Copywriting
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