|
A professionally presented business website is a powerful and essential marketing
tool: it's the first thing prospective customers will look at before they decide
to contact you.
If the copy on your website is not written to an acceptable standard, it may
be losing you customers. It’s not enough just to have amazing graphics
and imagery: you need the words to make it complete. Is the spelling correct?
Are punctuation marks in place? Does the copy make sense? These are questions
that website designers should be asking themselves before they upload a new
site.
One of the biggest flaws with website copy is inconsistency: for example the
word ‘website’. Some sites spell it as one word, some as two words;
as far as I am aware both are acceptable, but not both versions on the same
site! In my opinion, a lack of consistency will deter a significant amount of
would-be customers from using the services of a company that has not taken the
trouble to proofread their website.
Poor spelling on a website is another costly but avoidable mistake.
The majority of visitors will leave the site very quickly if they find too many
spelling errors. This again will give them the impression that the site owners
don’t really care; and they would be right! I am also convinced that copy
that has been ‘padded out’ with insignificant trivia is also a big
turn-off for visitors – clear, concise and informative is the order of
the day.
Anything containing textual content should as a matter of course be proofread:
it's important that not only are mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar
found and corrected, but that the text flows smoothly for the reader. The copy
on a website should not be treated as the 'poor relation' of the project. You
can have the most up-to-date, eye-catching graphics available but you will still
need well-written copy to compliment them.
There are vast amounts of web design companies around that will happily inform
visitors how they can supply them with a state-of-the-art website but then insert
second-rate copy, which totally negates any good work they have achieved.
This will reduce the initial impact of the site, and more often than not will
have an adverse effect on business.
Remember: if visitors to your site can’t find the information they are
looking for because of badly written copy they will simply leave the site. The
only people to benefit will be your competitors.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Professional proofreader and copy-editor
|
