How To Plan Your New Website: Write Your Words First

When you’re planning a new website, you’re going to need something beyond beautiful fonts, a great color scheme, and professional photos. On every page, you’re going to need words that tell your story, explain your work, and lead people to buy. The words on your site are where people are going to get every bit of important, actionable information. So—once you’ve chosen a basic structure—follow my advice, save yourself some headaches, and write your words first.

This is the exact opposite of what many business owners do when they start to create a new website. It’s pretty typical to hire a web person (usually a coder with little or no design experience) who starts plugging in the visuals and working with colors, fonts, and graphics.

At the last minute, the builder asks for the copy. The business owner then sits down to write and discovers that:

• Creating copy, especially for something you do every day, is really hard.

• Writing and clarifying your work helps you think of better ideas for the visuals and other elements of your site. But by now, it’s too late.

Obviously, I’m a words person. But I promise I’m not implying that words are the most important element of a site. (They’re not.) They’re just the thing you should do first. Here are a few reasons why:

Doing the hardest part first creates positive momentum

For pretty much every one of my web clients, writing is the hardest part of the whole project. I’ve received panicked calls from folks who have been working with a web builder for weeks, who have a site that’s complete except for the copy. And now they need it, pronto. Avoid this situation by starting at the beginning: with the words. The rest of the project will flow (and get easier) from there.

Of course, all the elements of a website are interconnected. If you have a designer and a photographer and a copywriter, they all need to work together. If you decide on your messaging and write your copy first—before the photo session, before your web builder chooses icons for your services, maybe even before you finalize your branding—the site will be much more consistent and make a greater impact.

Your copy sets the direction & tone of your website

The way you introduce your business, your products or services, your staff, and the ‘why’ behind your brand all starts with words. Once you’ve explained your work in writing, you’ll understand the how you’d like information to flow on your site. 

You will have already worked out what to include on the Home page, what facts to drop in your bio, and what story would be the perfect introduction to your flagship product. 

And the tone of the language you use will help guide any new branding and set the stage for the visuals. Once your copy is written, it will be much easier to come up with a shot list for a photographer and icon ideas for your branding designer. It may even help you choose the color scheme for your site. 

The process of writing and editing helps clarify your vision

Once you know what you’re saying, you can decide how to enhance your message with visuals. Finished copy naturally suggests next steps. 

Let me give you an example.

Say you teach art lessons to kids and you want to have a photo session for your website. So you gather some of your students and parents, get signed permissions, and send out instructions and information. On the day of the shoot, you choose the perfect outfit to wear, bring all your supplies, and let your photographer capture some really cute photos of kids making amazing art. 

If you do the session before you write, you’ll end up with great photos. But let’s say after the photo session, you sit down to write and realize that it’s really important to you to focus on the fact that you use all non-toxic, glitter-free products. So you write “Clean, glitter-free fun!” as one of your headers. Great! It’s clear and positive and eye-catching.

But because you were so busy coordinating the photo shoot and you didn’t have a clear idea about the messages you wanted to focus on, you didn’t think through the details. Now, none of the images shows off the non-toxic labels on your supplies. And none of them show the shimmery alternatives to glitter you use. There are some great images that will work, but you don’t have the perfect shot. If you’d written ahead of time, you could have added these ideas to the shot list. 

Figure out what you will say first and it will guide the rest of the project.

Want to know how to hire someone to write your business content? Check out my post on 5 questions to ask a copywriter!