Nobody knows your business like you do, and that is exactly why the copy on your site should start with you. The catch is that knowing the work and writing about it are different skills, and most first drafts fail in a predictable way: they describe the business from the inside, in the trade’s own words, and customers cannot see themselves in it. The fix is not a copywriter, though you can hire one later. The fix is a process, and it starts with questions rather than sentences.
Start with the last ten conversations
Before writing anything, write down the last ten enquiries you actually got. Not the ideal ones, the real ones: what did they ask first, what worried them, what made them say yes. Sales calls, texts from a neighbour’s recommendation, the messages on your Facebook page, all of it.
This list is your copy brief, and it beats anything a professional would invent, because it is what your market actually wants to know rather than what you want to say. If six of ten asked about callout fees, the pricing question belongs on your site in plain words. If four mentioned a bad experience with a previous tradesperson, the guarantee and the review count matter more than the brand story.
The interview that writes the page
Answer these in writing, in plain sentences, as if telling a friend:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| What do customers say the problem feels like before they call? | Their words become your headline |
| What happens on a typical job, start to finish? | Process copy builds trust and kills the “what happens next” fear |
| What do you refuse to do, or warn people about? | Honest limits are the strongest credibility signal on any page |
| What does a happy job look like afterwards? | The outcome, not the activity, is what people buy |
| What questions do you always get before signing? | Each one is a page section you were going to forget |
Write the answers long, then cut. The cutting matters more than the writing: first drafts are you thinking out loud, and the customer only needs the conclusions. Half of every first draft is usually context nobody asked for.
The voice trap, and the two-pass fix
There is a reason so many small business sites sound the same. Everyone borrows the phrases: “quality workmanship”, “customer satisfaction is our priority”, “serving the area for many years”. None of them are lies, and none of them distinguish you from the firm down the road, because the firm down the road has the same sentences.
The two-pass fix: write the draft, then go back through and replace every claim with the specific version of itself. “Quality workmanship” becomes “we fit the bathroom in five days and take the old suite away” or “every job signed off by the person who quoted it”. “Fast response” becomes “we answer the phone before the third ring, and if we miss you, you get a call back within the hour”. Specifics can be argued with, which is what makes them believable.
Structure each page so nobody has to work
The reading pattern on a services page is a scan, not a read. Give the scan somewhere to land:
- One line at the top that says what you do and for whom, no adjectives
- Three to five named services, each with a sentence on who it is for
- One short block on how working with you goes, in steps
- Proof placed where doubt shows up: reviews by the contact button, photos by the service they show
- A contact block that says what happens after they press send
Keep sentences short and vary their length. Read the page aloud: any sentence you cannot say in one breath gets split. Any paragraph you skip while reading aloud gets shorter or deleted.
Write like you explain the job across a kitchen table, then edit like you are being charged per word. The first pass finds the truth, the second pass makes it survive a scan.
Cut these on sight
Every draft has them, and they are safe to remove without losing meaning: phrases starting “we are proud to”, “passionate about”, “committed to”; any sentence that could be pasted onto a competitor’s site without edits; the history paragraph nobody reads, which can shrink to one line on the about page; any word you would not use to a customer’s face.
Keep the specific details you are tempted to trim because they feel too ordinary. The boring particulars are the credible ones: that you turn up when you say, that you text before arriving, that the price quoted is the price invoiced. Ordinary is what customers are shopping for.
When to hand it to someone else
DIY copy first, professional polish second, is the right order for most budgets. You write the raw material, the interview answers and the specifics; a copywriter restructures it in half the time it would take them starting from a blank page, and charges for hours not invention. Handing over a brief built from real customer conversations is also how you keep the voice: the edit should sound like you on a good day, not like a brochure.
Write the answers to five questions, cut the draft in half, replace every borrowed phrase with its specific version. That is most of what a copywriter would charge you for, and it will sound more like you than anything generated to fit a template.