can web designers pull off copywriting?

I'm a web designer by trade. I'm considering doing some copywriting for smaller clients-- kinda like a holistic service. I've dabbled a bit in it and i've gotten compliments on some of my understanding of the web copyrighting such as the usage of "you" and "AIDA, etc...

I know I won't be a great copywriter but are there any designers here who feel like they might have pulled it off...providing good web design and web copywriting services?

 

I have different people for copywriting and designs.
The "You" stuff is good but there's lot more in copywriting...

 

Definitely-- I agree. I was just throwing something out there

I run a small boutique for small to midsize companies so I think that I might be able to introduce the service to those solo business professionals. I'm not quite sure though so i wanted the opinions of others as well. BTW, to clarify, i mean web copyrighting services. I don't care for any thing but that.

 

You can surely try it out but try selling something of your own first using your own written page. That will give you a wider vision and you will learn a lot changing your sales pages for better responses.

Personally I think selling & marketing stuff on web is more difficult than doing it elsewhere. When someone walks in your office and has doubts about buying your services, you can talk to them and clear off the doubts. But on web, you have to think about all the doubts before hand. You cannot talk to the person on your website, listen to what specific doubts they have and clear them so they buy.

When selling a service, you must concentrate on trying to get them to call you so you can talk and close the deal. While when selling products, you must by all means try and close the deal immediately. The difference is in the customer mind set when they go shopping, services or products.
(This doesn't apply to all products and services, but does to most.)

Try it out first with something of your own and when you see good response, you can also use the results as proves of your previous work. Provide visitor to conversion ratio for pages written by you.
It's good that you already have a mind set for this!
Best of luck!

 

re: trying to sell on the web.

Interesting observation you made. It's definitely very possible with some guidance. Read this article.

I have premium membership to MarketingProfs and they have decent stuff on copywriting and marketing in general

 

Nice article.
Thanks for sharing.

 

Why not partner with someone who is (outsource). You can still provide your clients with an all round solution, and they need never know that you didn't do the copywriting yourself.

To me it would make sense to do this rather than provide clients with a less-than-perfect solution, I'm not saying your efforts would be less-than-perfect, but I hope you know what I mean .

This would also speed up your delivery, as you could be designing while the copywriter is writing, rather than you doing all the work yourself.

 

You could probably handle small copywriting projects on the actual topic of web design, since it's your expertise. Just stick to what you know instead of trying to branch out too generally.

Jenn

 

I actually did consider outsourcing/offshoring at one point, but it's a headace. I'd rather just give to a web copywriter if I feel i can't handle it. The ones that I would probably take are those who, in addition to needing a basic brochure ware site, would also need website copy as well. Those are the ones that I can handle. but we shall see...

 

I'm in two minds about your proposition driven but the thought of being able to write your own copy as you design is an interesting one. It would certainly overcome one hassle that we often see.

Too often the designer is the first person to see a new project and the copywriter is the last. Right now we're working on a project for a client and basically we've been left to fill in some blank spaces in the design.

The result is that a major selling point for the client has been missed totally by the designer and we don't have the space to develop it for the client.

 

How true, how true

I'm not one of those designers who think that the design is the end all be all of having an effective web presence. Design is nice but effective web copy is just as important. But like you said, many clients value design more than they value copy. I feel your pain

What do you mean by space? or do you mean you don't have the time to design it?

For me, the reason why I'd focus mostly on indie service professionals is that once you've written web copy for a few sites, you start to see an emerging trend. Ultimately, you start to become efficient and identify patterns involved for web copywriting for this particular market. It's a good way to squeeze a little bit more money from the clients that can afford web copy and web design.

Thanks for the dialogue.

 

Driven I mean we don't have the space - literally.

The site has been designed with several blank spots that our copy has to fill. We have been told that it can't exceed a certain character length. The client gave us a list of points they wanted the copy to make so we are fairly limited in what we could say.

Neither the client nor the designer realised that they needed to address the reasons why their product is different to what their competitors are offering.

We've pointed that out to the client but they want to go live with their product this week so they aren't interested in going back to the designer. (BTW - we only saw the project for the first time late last week)

While they are happy with what we have provided, we are not.

 

Don't you hate it when there is some micromanagement involved? It's like, why can't they let you do what you do best w/o all this input???

 

I think you can do both of them well
Gook Luck!

 

First of all, I'm an Internet programmer and a sales copy writer,


.... and a researcher, and a dad, and a cat owner, and I write dungeons and dragons games and a news editor and a white paper writer and a technical writer and... jeez

...and you are worried if you can design and write copy? Of course you can. The question should be, is it profitable for you to do so?

I can design websites (www.scarn.com , www.pointofsalesupply.com , www.lifehousesoberliving.com ) but I don't do it very often. The reason is that it takes me forever to come up with a design idea, and then to get that design onto the web page.

The reason I'm so slow is that I'm not a designer, I'm a writer. I can put out web copy at 4000 words a day, and charge $50 on the average per article, I make a pretty good living.

So most of the time, I hire a designer, because it costs me more to do it myself.

If I look at how much I make writing, verses how much I make designing the choice is always clear.

Now, another question you should ask is; how important are these clients?

Writing for the web is different than writing for print, especially for copy. You can get, or write good 'print' copy and put it on the website and everyone will smile and say that it is good, and ... not make 1/3 of the traffic or sales that you would have if you had a real web copy writer do it for you.

There will probably be nothing wrong with the copy. It will probably be effective, vigorous writing ... but it just won't reach its full potential.

This is a dangerous situation, because it appears that you have succeeded when in fact you have not. If no one is the wiser, then, no problem right?

In every skill set there are layers of knowledge which are not apparent to the non adept eye. As a designer you think of key ingredients that someone who is not a designer will miss.

Are these ingredients important? Only if the client is.

 

In my experience, and this isn't a dig to anyone ... I'm only micro-managed like this when I have not a) sold / informed the client properly, b) didn't realize that I could walk soon enough.

Managing clients is a learned skill, no matter what you do. They say customer is always right. I say the customer is full of crap most of the time and has to be forced into making money about 1/3 of the time. I don't want to recall how many times I've had to drag a client by the hair into the profit circle.