When you rush website copywriting and throw everything together at the last minute, you risk making mistakes.
Worse, you are potentially ruining your sales potential.
Spelling mistakes stifle sales
It makes intuitive sense that spelling errors and grammar issues in your copywriting would turn off some readers. But one little spelling wouldn’t really affect the sales, would it?
Yes it would. And here’s proof.
An article on the BBC caught our eye over the summer. Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales explains how an online entrepreneur proved that one spelling mistake can cut sales in half.
When he measured transactions on his website, he found that sales DOUBLED after fixing a spelling error in the copywriting.
Taking this across multiple pages and websites, you can easily imagine just how much revenue is potentially being lost because of poor literacy skills in copywriting.
Fraud and safety concerns
Think about it.
Your customers receive a stream of spam and fraudulent emails. They read about online fraudsters and they are concerned about their safety.
If your pages contain basic spelling errors, your reader questions the credibility of your website. You look like fraud or spam.
At best, basic errors can be seen as carelessness.
“They made mistakes in the spelling; will they make mistakes filling my order?”
How can you prevent basic copywriting mistakes?
Firstly, take the time to put together the best content you can.
The time aspect is often underestimated. That’s because, although there may be some good writers in the business, they are often not professional communicators and may find the sheer amount of content required is a daunting task. Rushing the copy will only make errors more likely.
Don’t rely on spell-check. Get someone else to proof-read copywriting.
Having another pair of eyes looking over the copy will help catch basic mistakes. Spell-checking tools are notoriously poor at finding all the errors, especially when erroneous entries have accidentally made it into your custom dictionary.
Don’t believe me? Just copy the text below into your favourite word-processor and check it.
Ewe cant be shore. Be cause spell cheque is knot all ways write.
When in doubt
Hire a professional.
Time, experience and ‘expertise blindness’ all contribute to errors finding their way into copywriting. When you hire a copywriter, you off-load the time onto someone else.
You also gain the writing professional’s experience. Most of all, an outsider will bring an eye for details that you might be overlooking because you’re so close to the subject matter.
More than web pages
Spelling is supremely important in ALL your business communications. Emails, brochures, sales letters, landing pages, order forms, error messages, 404 pages.
Everything.
Do you have spelling errors on your site or in your emails?
Are you sure?
Just like sales training, when you learn to smile while speaking on the phone. If you smile while you write, it will be projected into your text. Just one little tip though: trying to be ‘funny’ will not end well. Just be happy and have fun with your writing – skip the jokes.
