Web Copywriting
What a Copywriter Needs From You Before They Write a Word
Most disappointing website copy is a briefing failure, not a writing failure. Here is the short list of things a writer cannot invent for you.
When website copy comes back generic, the instinct is to blame the writer. Usually the brief was generic first. A copywriter can improve how something is said, but almost everything worth saying has to come out of your business — and if it never reaches them, the page defaults to the safe, empty version every competitor already published.
The Things a Writer Cannot Invent
There is a short list of inputs that no amount of research replaces. Everything else on a brief is optional.
- Who actually buys, and who signs off: often not the same person, and a page written for one will lose the other.
- The objections you hear on real calls: the three or four things prospects push back on before they commit. These are the page.
- What you say when a prospect asks why you, not them: whatever you say out loud in that moment is the differentiator. It is rarely what is on the website.
- What happens after someone enquires: who replies, how fast, what the first conversation is. Buyers want to know what they are walking into.
- Numbers you are willing to publish: turnaround, team size, price, years running. Every number replaces an adjective.
- Work you are proud of: named clients, results, before-and-afters, or the reasons you cannot share them.
- Claims you are not comfortable making: the boundary matters as much as the material. Say it up front, not in revisions.
- What the page should make someone do: one action. Not "raise awareness".
If you can only supply one of these, supply the objections. A page that answers the four things buyers actually worry about outperforms a beautifully written page that answers none of them.
Brand Adjectives Are Not a Brief
Almost every brief that arrives describes the desired tone as professional but approachable. It is not wrong, it is just not usable — it describes roughly every business that has ever commissioned copy, so it steers nothing.
Tone is far easier to communicate by example than by adjective. Send two pages you wish yours read like, two you actively dislike, and one sentence on why for each. That gives a writer more direction than a page of brand values, and it takes five minutes.
Say What Is Fixed and What Is Open
A brief that does not mark its constraints produces a first draft that breaks them. Be explicit about the things that cannot move: a headline the founder is attached to, a legally required phrase, a page structure the developer has already built, a term your industry uses that sounds like jargon but is not negotiable.
Equally, say where you want to be challenged. Most clients have one section they secretly know is not working, and a writer will leave it alone unless told it is open.
Watch for the brief written by committee where every stakeholder adds a must-mention. Eight must-mentions on one page means nothing gets emphasis, and the result reads like a compromise because it is one. Rank them instead of listing them.
Who Approves It, and Against What
The most expensive part of a copy project is usually the review round where someone who was not in the kickoff reads the draft for the first time. Name the approver in the brief, and agree what they are judging against — the brief, ideally, and not personal preference.
It also helps to say what a revision request should look like. "I do not like this" cannot be actioned; "this does not answer the price objection we agreed was the biggest one" can.
A Brief Worth Writing Takes About an Hour
Not a day. Most of the material already exists in your sales emails, your proposal template and your own answers on discovery calls — the work is collecting it, not creating it. An hour spent there routinely saves two rounds of revisions later.
If you are still deciding what the page is for before you brief it, start with what website copywriting is meant to do. When you are ready to hand it over, our website copywriting service starts with the interview rather than a form, for exactly the reason above.
Questions
Questions about this article
Still unsure about something? Talk to a specialist — no script, no sales pitch.
Two pages is usually plenty, and one good page beats ten vague ones. What matters is specificity, not length — three real objections you hear on sales calls are worth more than a page describing your brand as professional and innovative.
Say so in the brief rather than guessing. A writer can work from "we are not sure whether our buyer is the owner or the office manager, and we want the page to work for both" — that is a real constraint. A made-up persona sends the whole page in a direction nobody checked.
An interview usually gets more out of you than a form does, because the useful material is the things you say offhand and would never think to type. A written brief is still worth doing first — it gives the interview somewhere to start.