How to write about your own business
This is the part that stalls most websites. Not the design, not the budget — the words. People put it off for weeks because writing about yourself feels like boasting, and because a blank page is intimidating.
Here's a way through it that doesn't require you to be a writer.
The rule that fixes most of it
Write like you'd talk to a customer standing in front of you.
If a woman came into your shop and asked what you do, you wouldn't say "we leverage decades of combined expertise to deliver bespoke solutions tailored to your unique requirements." You'd say "we make kitchens. Everything's built here in the workshop. Takes about six weeks."
The second one is better. It's clearer, it's more convincing, and it sounds like a person.
The instinct to sound formal on a website is almost always wrong. Formal reads as distant, and distant reads as expensive and hard to deal with.
Don't write. Answer questions.
The trick is not to sit down and "write your website." It's to answer questions, then tidy up the answers.
Record yourself on your phone answering these out loud, then type up what you said. It's far easier than writing, and what comes out sounds like you.
About what you do
- What do you actually do, in one sentence?
- Who's your typical customer?
- What do people ring you about most?
- What do you do that the fella down the road doesn't?
- What do you not do? Who should go elsewhere?
About how you work
- What happens after someone contacts you? Walk through it step by step
- How long does a typical job take?
- What do you need from the customer before you start?
- How do people pay you?
About you
- How long have you been doing this?
- How did you get into it?
- What did you do before?
- What are you actually good at?
- What's the thing you'd want a customer to know about you?
About money
- What does a typical job cost?
- What makes it more expensive? What makes it less?
- What's the cheapest way to work with you?
Answer those honestly and you have your entire website. What's left is arranging it.
What goes where
Homepage. What you do, who for, where, and one clear next step. Somebody landing here should know within five seconds whether they're in the right place. Don't open with your company history.
About page. Your story, in plain terms. Where you started, how you got here, what you're good at. This page does more work than people expect, especially for one-person businesses — customers want to know who they're letting into their house.
Services. One section per thing you do, in plain names customers would use. "Bathroom fitting", not "wet room installation solutions."
Prices, if you're willing. Publishing them puts you ahead of most of your competitors and filters out the people who were never going to buy.
Contact. Phone, email, area covered, hours. Make it easy.
Phrases to cut
These appear on almost every small business website and none of them mean anything:
- "We pride ourselves on..."
- "Passionate about delivering..."
- "Second to none"
- "Bespoke solutions tailored to your needs"
- "Your one-stop shop for all your X needs"
- "Quality workmanship at competitive prices"
The test: could your closest competitor put the identical sentence on their site? If yes, it's telling the reader nothing.
Replace claims with facts.
Not "we pride ourselves on fast response times" but "if you ring before 10am, I'll usually be with you the same day."
Not "quality workmanship" but "everything's built in the workshop in Mallow. Nothing's bought in."
Facts are more convincing than adjectives, and they're easier to write because you already know them.
Say what you don't do
Counter-intuitive, and it works.
"I don't do social media. Done properly it's a specialist job and I'd rather tell you that than do it badly."
"We don't do emergency call-outs. If your boiler's gone at 11pm, ring [someone else] — they're better set up for it."
Two things happen. You stop wasting time on enquiries you'd have turned down anyway. And you become far more believable on everything else, because a business willing to say no reads as honest.
Length
Shorter than you think.
- Homepage: 150 to 300 words total
- About page: 400 to 800 words
- Each service: 100 to 200 words
People don't read websites, they scan them. Short paragraphs, two or three sentences each. Headings so someone skimming can find what they want. White space.
If you've written 1,500 words for your homepage, the problem isn't editing — it's that most of it belongs on another page or nowhere at all.
"I" or "we"?
If you're a one-person business, say I. It's honest, and it's a strength rather than something to hide.
"We" from a sole trader is transparent and slightly awkward. And "you'll be dealing with me, start to finish" is genuinely more attractive to a lot of customers than the impression of a faceless company.
Write the ugly version first
The most useful advice I can give: the first draft is meant to be bad.
Get everything down without stopping to fix anything. Ignore spelling, ignore repetition, ignore whether it sounds good. Just empty your head onto the page.
Then leave it a day and cut. Cutting is far easier than writing, and there's always more to cut than you'd expect.
Most people stall because they're trying to write and edit at once, which is like trying to drive with the handbrake on.
Read it out loud
The single best check there is. If you stumble over a sentence, it's too complicated. If it sounds like a press release, rewrite it as you'd say it.
Your ear catches things your eye won't.
Get somebody else to read it
Not another business owner. A customer, or someone like one.
Ask them one question: "After reading that, do you know what I do and what it'd cost?"
If the answer is anything other than a straight yes, you know where the work is.
If you genuinely can't face it
That's fine, and it's common. Plenty of people who are excellent at their trade find this miserable.
Two options: record yourself answering the questions above and send someone the audio, or pay somebody to write it. Either beats a website that sits half-finished for eight months because the words never came.
What doesn't work is copying a competitor's text and changing the names. Google penalises duplicated content, it may not be theirs to copy either, and it makes you sound like somebody else.
Struggling with the words? I write website copy from a short conversation about your business — €85 a page, two rounds of revisions. Or send me your rough notes and I'll tell you honestly whether they need it.