In today’s world of fast answers, short attention spans, and a thousand brands all competing for that limited attention, it’s important to engage your website visitors quickly and effectively with compelling content.
You’ve probably heard phrases like “content is king” and “engagement is important”, but it’s one thing to know that you have to do a thing, and another to actually do it.
So, how do you write engaging website copy? We can give you a hand.
Here are our top tips on creating website content that resonates with your audience (and also drives them to action).
- The better you understand your audience, the easier it is to write copy that actually connects and drives action.
- Write like you speak. Clear, conversational language builds trust and keeps people engaged.
- Say what you do, who it’s for, and why it matters upfront. Don’t make people work to figure it out.
- People care about outcomes, so show them how your product or service improves their situation.
- Use headings, short paragraphs, and clear CTAs so your content is easy to scan and act on.
Understand who you’re talking to 💬
The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that you know who you’re talking to.
Great copy speaks directly to its reader. To engage and resonate with your audience, you have to keep them top-of-mind as you write.
Some important things to understand about your audience are:
- Who are they?
- What kind of language resonates with them?
- What are they looking for / what do they want?
- What keeps them up at night? What are their pain points, and how can you help?
- What are the things that they care most about, in relation to what you can give them?
The more you understand your audience, the better you can speak their language and write copy that clicks.
Consider creating audience personas
Developing customer personas can be a great idea if you have the time. They’re essentially characters that represent your main customer types, including their demographics, interests, and motivations, and help guide your content creation.
A good copywriter will often have a buyer persona in mind automatically. At Excite Media, we ask a bunch of questions before we begin writing your website content so we can build that persona for your brand.
Decide on a tone of voice that works for your brand
“Tone of voice” refers to the general feel of your writing. Is it formal or informal, fun or serious? Your copy should be consistent in tone, and that tone should be engaging and welcoming to your audience.
In most cases, conversational tones win
Your web copy isn’t an academic essay. It’s a conversation. So write how you speak, be personable, use contractions, show enthusiasm and be relatable. Conversational doesn’t mean unprofessional; it means human, and being human is key to building that connection.
The most engaging website copy is warm, welcoming, upbeat, approachable, and knowledgeable all at the same time.
Talk to your audience, not at them
Write in the first or second person (I/we/you). Talk directly to your reader, not past them.
Keeping it simple
In the world of web copy, less is often more. People are busy. They don’t have time to read through dense, complex text. So, keep it simple.
Use short sentences and paragraphs. Avoid jargon and complex vocabulary. Use bullet points or numbered lists to break up information. And most importantly, make your point quickly and clearly.
Basically, don’t over-complicate it.
Even if you work in a technical industry, it’s harder to read copy that is overly formal, or that uses technical jargon or long-winded descriptions. Easier to read and digest is easier to engage.
Unless you’re writing for an audience who are likely to look down on simple language, keep it light, easy and readable.
Find your USP and highlight it ✍️
Put the most important stuff first
- What you do/offer
- What the key benefits are
- Your relevance (for example, your service location or who you service).
Focus on benefits over features ✨
Your audience cares less about what your product or service does and more about what it does for them. Does it save time, save money, or reduce stress? Lead with that, that’s what they want to know.
But in some cases, features definitely need to be mentioned, especially for software or complex products, but lead with the benefits first. Get them hooked, then give them the details.
Structure your content 🧱
If you’re creating the copy for your whole website, it’s important to plan out what website pages you’ll have, what information needs to be communicated for each, and how to structure this best for the optimal user experience/user journey (hint: it’s wherever it makes the most sense to go).
A list of your website pages is called a sitemap, and it ‘maps’ out your website’s pages, and your menu structure/page structure, so you know everything you have to write. These will help you a lot, so start there.
Page structure: headings and subheadings
Headings are often the only thing people read when skim-reading (which is actually most of the time). So, make them count.
Great headlines promise a benefit, create urgency, or spark even a little bit of curiosity. They cut through the noise and speak directly to the reader. Use your H1–H4 structure to organise information clearly and make pages easy to navigate.
The heading to rule all headings: your homepage H1
Your homepage H1 is the most important heading on your entire site. It needs to clearly explain what you do, and ideally what’s in it for the reader, in a (engaging) nutshell.
A quick word on the homepage in general
Think of your homepage as the ‘best hits’ of your website. Easy to skim, easy to navigate, and covering the most important stuff with clear links through to the rest of your site.
Other things for readability and structure
Your website content’s readability and skimmability is a crucial element of writing engaging website copy. It has to be super easy to read, interpret and digest.
People don’t love looking at walls of text, so it’s important to use structural tools to help them digest the content and engage with it.
- Use infographics where you can, especially if you are explaining a complicated concept that can be broken down better visually.
- Consider the visual presentation and structure of everything — would this work better as a visual table? A list?
- Make important bits of your text stand out as break-out pieces, in quote boxes, in a heavier font, or in another way that makes them stand out visually.
- Don’t be afraid to use dot-point lists. They make things much easier to read.
- Break up the content with images and other visual elements.
Inspire action: create compelling CTAs 🤝
A call to action (CTA) is arguably the most important part of your web copy. It’s where you ask your reader to do something such as buy, enquire, book, download. A great CTA is clear, action-oriented, and ideally creates a sense of urgency or immediacy. Some good ones:
- Talk to an expert
- Get a quote
- Get a free quote
- Get a quick quote
- Download your guide
- Get in touch
- Got a question? Ask us
Utilising SEO 🕸️
Writing website copy isn’t just about engaging the readers, it’s also about engaging the search engines (so you can get more readers to engage with your amazing writing).
Be sure to work in some core keywords that your audience is searching for, in a natural and relevant way.
That way, you’ll engage not just the people, but the search engines as well.
If you want to engage people, though, never sacrifice quality content for SEO. If you need help in this department, ask us — we’ll be happy to help.
Tell search engines exactly who you are
This is a big one in modern website copy. Gone are the days when you’d have your whole life story on your homepage (we don’t really want to know all that anyway, right?) But nowadays, Google has become increasingly clever at understanding what a website is about and who’s behind it. If your copy doesn’t make that crystal clear, you’re working against yourself.
Be direct and explicit on your homepage and key pages about:
- What you do in plain, simple language. Not clever, not vague.
- Who you do it for, AKA your target audience and industry.
- Where you operate. This is especially important for local businesses.
“We’re a Brisbane-based web design agency helping small businesses grow online”, tells Google everything it needs to know. “We craft digital experiences for tomorrow’s world” tells it almost nothing.
This ties into entity-based SEO, where Google builds a picture of your business as a whole: what it is, what it does, where it operates, and who it serves. The clearer your copy, the better positioned you are.
EEAT: Why your credibility matters more than ever
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, Google’s framework for evaluating content quality and credibility.
Experience that reflects real-world, firsthand knowledge. Share your story, years in the industry, client numbers, or case studies.
Expertise that demonstrates in-depth knowledge. Helpful, accurate copy signals expertise; generic copy doesn’t.
Authoritativeness, such as awards, media features, certifications, or industry memberships.
Trustworthiness includes clear contact details, a physical address, genuine testimonials, and transparent policies.
So when you’re writing the copy, don’t hide your credentials or your experience. If you’ve been in business for 20 years, say so. If you’ve helped 500 clients, put it front and centre.
Trustworthiness signals aren’t just good for SEO, but they’re good for conversions too.
YMYL: When the stakes are higher
Some industries face extra scrutiny from Google, known as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics. These include health, legal, financial, safety, and news content, where bad information can harm people.
If you operate in these spaces, EEAT matters even more, so make sure your copy:
- Clearly identifies who is writing or providing the content
- Includes relevant qualifications and credentials
- Is accurate, up to date, and free of misleading claims
- Links to credible sources where appropriate
- Who you do it for, AKA your target audience and industry.
- Where you operate. This is especially important for local businesses.
Even if you’re not in a YMYL industry, these are good practices to get into the habit of. The more credible your site appears, the better it performs and converts.
Use the power of storytelling 📚
Use powerful, emotive words
Powerful and emotive words and writing styles are very engaging to audiences. Using dramatic writing styles for flair and drama can add emotive power to your writing. You can sometimes use unconventional writing styles, in favour of emotive writing. Remember, you’re not writing an academic essay. You’re writing skimmable, engaging website copy.
Don’t be afraid to use words that make people feel things (where appropriate, of course).
Emotive content sells.
(Also, don’t be afraid to add drama with one sentence ‘pars’ (paragraphs of one line) like this one above. They’re called orphan statements or orphan sentences, or sentence fragments, and their shortness draws attention to them. They have power. (See, we totally did it again).
The robotic elephant in the room: using AI in your copywriting 🤖
AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are everywhere now, and yes, they can be super helpful. But they shouldn’t be relied upon.
Think of AI as a well-read assistant who’s absorbed a lot of information, but doesn’t know your business, your customers, or your industry the way you do. It can give you a great starting point, but it still needs your voice, expertise, and real-world knowledge to be able to shine.
How AI is best used (in our opinion)
Basically, AI is a great tool to assist you in your writing, but it can’t replace a human writer and it can’t replace your manual work in writing the words, unless you want to run the risk of presenting incorrect information, producing content that doesn’t read as human, or be flagged as having AI-generated content and having your SEO position drop as a result.
- To give you some inspiration to get started, so you’re not starting with a blank slate
- To give you ideas on how to summarise some of your content
- To give you a starting point that you then rewrite
- To give you some ideas for structure or points that you can include
Then rewrite it, fact check it, make it yours, and most importantly, make it human. No one wants to read something that sounds like everything else they’ve read on the internet, add your own flair to it. If someone can tell that it’s been created using ChatGPT, you may as well have thrown your credibility out the window yourself.
A few words of caution
AI-generated content that isn’t personalised tends to score poorly on EEAT; it doesn’t reflect firsthand experience or expertise. Search engines are also getting better at detecting and deprioritising thin AI content, so relying on it without meaningful human input can actually hurt your SEO.
There are also still unresolved copyright questions around AI-generated copy, and if AI produces incorrect facts, it’s your reputation on the line. Our best piece of advice? Use it as a tool, not a replacement.
Now go forth and engage, dear reader
Creating engaging web copy isn’t about following a strict formula.
It’s about understanding your audience, delivering value, and being human. It’s about capturing attention, generating interest, creating desire, and inspiring action. And it’s about continually testing and improving your content.
With these strategies, we’re sure you’ll do a great job of crafting website copy that resonates with your audience and drives action. So go forth and engage those audiences!
Want us to do it for you? 💚
At Excite Media, we have an amazing team of in-house copywriters. They are really talented, and they have great hair and excellent fashion sense. They’re also terribly modest. And definitely “not” writing these compliments about themselves (wink).
If you’re looking at a new website, copywriting is something that we can take care of as part of your website project — just ask your friendly neighbourhood Excite Media Project Manager, or get in touch with us to ask about how we can help you with website copy for your existing website.
