Why Isn't My Website Copy Working?

Your Website Doesn't Need Better Words. It Needs a Better Understanding of Your Customer.

When a business decides its website needs improving, one of the first things somebody usually says is, “We need better copy.” Sometimes they do, but I think that diagnosis is often wrong.

Most businesses do not have a writing problem. They have an understanding problem.

They know their own business incredibly well. They know their products, services, processes, qualifications, history and all the reasons they believe somebody should choose them. What they often do not understand quite as well is the conversation happening inside the head of the person landing on their website.

That is where most website copy starts to go wrong.

Most businesses write their websites from the inside out

Spend half an hour looking at business websites and you will see the same language everywhere. “We are passionate about…” “We pride ourselves on…” “We offer a comprehensive range of…” “Our experienced team is committed to…” “With years of combined experience…”

None of those statements are necessarily untrue. They are just not particularly useful.

The customer has arrived with their own priorities, concerns, questions and reasons for being there. They are not thinking about how passionate you are. They are trying to work out whether you can actually help them, whether you understand their situation, how much it is likely to cost, what happens next, whether they can trust you and what makes you different from the other businesses they are comparing.

Yet businesses routinely answer a completely different set of questions. They talk about themselves.

This, for me, is one of the biggest distinctions between writing and copywriting. Writing communicates information. Good copy understands why the reader needs that information in the first place.

I learned this through sales long before I thought about copywriting

For a large part of my career, I worked in sales, business development and leadership. One of the biggest lessons you learn when you spend enough time talking to customers is that people rarely care about your presentation as much as you think they do.

They care about their problem.

A poor salesperson talks about the company, the product, the features and everything they want the customer to know. A good salesperson starts somewhere else. They listen, ask questions, work out what is actually happening and understand what matters to that particular customer. Only then do they start explaining how they can help.

Website copy should work in exactly the same way.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites are the equivalent of a salesperson walking into the room, opening a 47-slide PowerPoint and talking for twenty minutes before asking the customer a single question.

Nobody enjoys that conversation, and they do not enjoy reading the website version either.

Search intent is customer intent

This becomes even more important when SEO enters the conversation.

SEO is sometimes treated as if it is mainly about finding keywords and putting them in the right places. Keywords matter, of course, but behind almost every worthwhile search query is a person trying to achieve something.

Someone searching for “accountant for small business” is not really looking for those four words. They may be worried about tax. They may have just started a company. They may be frustrated with their existing accountant. They may want somebody more proactive. They may be trying to understand fees or looking for someone who understands their industry.

The search term gives you the entrance to the conversation. It does not give you the entire conversation.

That is why simply dropping a keyword into a heading and mentioning it another six times down the page is not good SEO copywriting. The page needs to understand what happens after the search.

Why did they search? What do they need to know? What might stop them enquiring? What alternatives are they considering? What proof would make them trust the answer? What should they do next?

That is where SEO, customer understanding and copywriting become the same conversation.

Your website should answer the questions your best salesperson would ask

There is a useful exercise I think more businesses should do.

Forget your website for a moment and imagine one of your best potential customers is sitting opposite you. They are genuinely interested, but they are not convinced yet.

What would you talk about?

You probably would not begin by announcing that your company is “a leading provider of innovative solutions”. You would ask what they need. You would try to understand the situation. You would explain what is relevant, answer their concerns, give examples and probably discuss cost.

You would also explain the next step, and if you were good at your job, you would do all of that without making the other person feel as though they were being pushed through a sales process.

Now look at your website and ask yourself how much of that conversation is actually there.

That gap is where a huge amount of lost conversion sits.

Good copy is not about clever words

There is still a strange idea that copywriting means making things sound impressive. I think almost the opposite is true.

Good copy frequently makes things simpler.

It takes something the business has made complicated and makes it easier for the customer to understand. That matters because people do not arrive at your website hoping to admire your vocabulary. They arrive because they want to make a decision.

Sometimes that decision is simply whether to keep reading. Then it might be whether to look at another page, whether to trust you, whether to contact you and eventually whether to buy.

Your copy is helping somebody move through a series of very small decisions.

That is why clarity usually beats cleverness.

“Bespoke digital solutions designed to accelerate transformational growth” might sound impressive in a board meeting, but it tells a potential customer almost nothing.

Tell me what you actually do. Tell me who it is for. Tell me what problem you solve. Tell me what I can expect. Tell me why I should believe you.

That is copywriting.

The job of copy is not to manipulate someone into buying

This is another part of copywriting that I think gets misunderstood.

There are endless formulas, tricks, power words, psychological hacks and conversion tactics available online. Some of them are useful. Some are complete bollocks.

The objective of good copy should not be to somehow hypnotise an unsuitable customer into pressing the enquiry button. It should help the right customer make a confident decision.

That means good copy sometimes needs to tell somebody a service is not right for them. It might need to explain limitations, acknowledge a concern before trying to overcome it, explain why the cheapest option is not appropriate or even tell somebody they do not need you yet.

Counterintuitively, that kind of honesty can make copy far more persuasive.

Because persuasion without trust does not last very long.

Trust is built through specificity

One of the easiest ways to spot weak website copy is how vague it is.

“Exceptional customer service.” What does exceptional actually mean?

“Fast turnaround.” How fast?

“Experienced team.” Experienced in what?

“Tailored solutions.” What exactly gets tailored?

“High-quality service.” According to whom?

Businesses use these phrases because they feel safe. The problem is that every competitor can say exactly the same thing.

Specificity makes copy believable.

Instead of telling people you provide excellent service, show them what happens. Explain how quickly calls are answered, who they will speak to, how your process works, what is included and what happens after they enquire.

Show real examples. Answer awkward questions. Publish useful case studies. Give people evidence.

The more specific you become, the less you need the adjectives.

AI has made average writing incredibly cheap

This is where things become particularly interesting.

We now have access to tools capable of producing reasonably competent copy in seconds. That is useful. I use AI, and I would be slightly concerned about anyone working seriously in content today who refuses to engage with it at all.

But there is a consequence.

Generic content has never been easier to produce.

Give an AI system a prompt asking for a homepage for an accountancy firm, marketing agency, builder, coach or consultant and it will happily create one. It will probably be grammatically correct, have neat headings and talk about expertise, tailored solutions, customer service and taking the next step.

It will also probably sound remarkably similar to thousands of other websites.

The value of simply being able to produce words is falling. The value of understanding what needs to be said is going up.

That distinction matters.

AI can help structure a page. It can help research a subject, generate alternatives, identify gaps, challenge assumptions and improve a draft. But somebody still needs to understand the customer.

Somebody needs to know which questions matter. Somebody needs to know when the obvious answer is wrong. Somebody needs experience, judgement, context and a point of view.

That is where the value sits.

AI search makes this even more important, not less

Search itself is also changing.

Customers are no longer only typing a short query into Google and clicking through ten blue links. They might see an AI Overview, ask ChatGPT, use Copilot, Perplexity or another AI system to research their options.

And those conversations tend to become more detailed.

A customer might start by asking who provides a particular service, then move into which provider is best for a small business, what alternatives exist, how much it should cost, what to look out for, which companies have relevant experience and what the advantages and disadvantages are.

The businesses with useful, clear and specific information have far more to contribute to those conversations than businesses whose websites consist mainly of marketing claims.

This is why I think the future of copywriting and the future of search visibility are becoming increasingly connected.

Your content needs to be understandable. It needs depth, evidence and clarity. It needs to answer real questions and, ideally, say something worth repeating.

So what should good website copy actually do?

Not every page has the same purpose, but most strong website copy should achieve several things:

• Help the visitor recognise that they are in the right place.

• Demonstrate that you understand their situation.

• Explain what you do without making them work unnecessarily hard to understand it.

• Answer the obvious questions and some of the less obvious ones.

• Remove unnecessary uncertainty.

• Establish credibility without endlessly telling people how credible you are.

• Make the next step clear.

• Sound like a human being who understands another human being.

That sounds obvious.

A surprising amount of business copy manages to avoid doing almost all of it.

A simple test for your own website

Go to your homepage or your most important service page and read it from the perspective of somebody who knows nothing about your company.

Then ask yourself:

• Is this page mainly talking about us, or about the customer and what they are trying to achieve?

• Does it answer the questions somebody would genuinely ask before buying?

• Are our claims specific and supported, or could every competitor copy and paste them onto their own website?

• Would somebody understand what makes us different after reading this?

• Is there anything here that sounds impressive but does not actually mean anything?

• If I were having this conversation face-to-face with a customer, would I actually talk like this?

That last question catches a lot.

Start with understanding. The words come afterwards.

When I work on copy now, I do not want to begin with, “What should we write?”

I want to begin with understanding who we are talking to, what they are trying to do, what they already know, what they are worried about, what might stop them, what they need to believe before they act and what evidence we can give them.

Once you understand those things, the writing becomes much easier.

Because the objective is no longer to fill a blank page with impressive words.

You are continuing a conversation that has already started in the customer's head.

And that, for me, is what good copywriting is really about.

Your website probably does not need more words. It may not even need cleverer words.

It needs the right words, in the right place, answering the right questions for the right person.

Understand the customer first.

Then write.