If your online sales have taken a dip lately, your product or service isn't necessarily to blame. Even
best products and services can be hidden in obscurity when covered by a blanket of bad website copy. So what can you do to make sure your copy sings praises of not only your product, but your business smarts and credibility as well?First of all, you need to start with basics. Begin by printing out all pages of your web copy. Then, grab a red pen and go to work. Read carefully through each sentence of your copy, correcting any mistakes in spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you don't feel you have expertise to find all those common little mistakes, have someone else do it for you. Unless you have a degree in English, you're likely to miss something.
Now, some of you might be taking this advice with a grain of salt, thinking that most people don't notice or concern themselves with grammatical errors in your web copy. It's true that some people won't notice or won't care, but savvy, intelligent people (which your customers likely are) will notice, and those little mistakes can quickly add up to a gaping hole in your credibility. Don't insult your customers' intelligence by assuming they won't notice these mistakes.
After you've made it all way through your copy, and are satisfied that your grammar is absolute perfection, read it again. Better yet, have someone else read it. The value in this is simple. If there's a sentence or paragraph that doesn't make perfect sense or fully explain what you're trying to say, you're less likely to notice it than someone who really NEEDS information. You already know everything you're trying to explain to others, so clarity is not as big an issue for you, than for someone who knows nothing about your business. So, ask a friend, relative, or neighbor to read your copy carefully and point out anything that isn't perfectly clear. If you want to be successful, your potential customers need to have a clear picture of what you're offering.
