Inbound Marketing Website Redesign Starts with Killer Copywriting

You already know that inbound marketing is an effective way to grow your audience and influence conversions. You also know that your website is an important part of this process, so you opt for an inbound marketing website redesign to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your site. However, as you start to plan out the process, you begin to wonder: where is the best place to start?

Though you may immediately think that design is the best place to start planning your redesign, the truth is that focusing on copywriting first can provide a wealth of benefits that ultimately result in a more successful inbound marketing website. Below, we’ll guide you through just a few of the reasons why your website redesign needs to start with content.

Why Inbound Marketing Website Redesign Starts with Killer Copywriting

Though some may argue that design should come first when it comes to redesigning your inbound marketing website, we think that a content-first approach can actually help make the redesign process go more smoothly, not to mention it can help set you up for success. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Starting with design first can place too many limitations on your content.

Use a layout that is visually appealing and easy to read. You may also want to consider elements such as icons to help break up your points, just as we’ve done in the above example.

Though it is vital to have a website design that is user-friendly, responsive, and SEO-driven, it is ultimately your site’s written content that will get a visitor to stay and take a look at what you have to say. Even the most attractive websites are not going to convert more of visitors if the right messaging isn’t there.

Taking a design-first approach to website redesign tends to put limitations on your copy that can hold your site back from success. The design of your site dictates how much space you can provide for written content. By starting with design first, you are limiting yourself to only having a certain amount of space for text. This takes the focus away from crafting a tailored message that speaks to your audience and instead places an emphasis on conforming to character count requirements. In the end, this can significantly impact your messaging and could very well end up detracting from your site content and, ultimately, conversion rates.

Starting with a copy-first approach to your website redesign helps ensure that the brand messaging is at the forefront of your site redesign efforts. Rather than prioritizing word count, your copywriters can focus on what matters most – communicating who your brand is and what it can offer to your target audience. Overall, this is the type of content that you will need to include on your site if you want to capture your audience’s attention and influence more conversions.

2. Working on your copy first helps you refine your brand story and other branding elements.

Part of developing engaging and successful website copy is considering your brand positioning. Where does your company fit into the industry, and how does it stack up against other brands providing similar products or services? If this is something that you have not considered or if it has been awhile since you’ve looked at what your competitors are doing, it is important to do a little research on your competitors and refine your own brand positioning and messaging before moving forward with redesign.

By working on your copy first, you can take the time to identify your strategic advantages and the parts of your brand identity that will become important for the website. By putting your brand story into words and developing your messaging early on in the redesign process, you can work to provide a bit more clarity when it comes to branding. This clarity will make all the difference when it comes to communicating your value and competitive advantages to your site visitors.

If you start with copywriting, then by the time you get to the visual design elements, you will be able to build a site design that not only helps you accomplish your overall objectives but also highlight the strategic messaging that you’ve developed. If you start with design instead of content then you may end up developing a website that looks nice but does not necessarily emphasize the important parts of your messaging or speak to the unique elements of your brand.

Consider this example from Imperva. Their design fits with their copy and their brand style.

Source

3. Your website copy can help inspire site design.

While the visual design of your website has the potential to limit your copywriting, your written content can actually help improve your design by providing inspiration for your site visuals. For example, let’s say that you develop messaging that centers around the idea that you can help your customers grow in some way. This growth messaging might inspire you to use visuals that show positive change and growth such as growing plants. Had you designed your website before developing your copy, you may not have been able to emphasize the value that your company provides in such a way.

Though your copy won’t always provide inspiration for specific images or visuals, it can still inspire elements of your website design in other ways. For instance, let’s say that your copywriters develop the perfect headline that immediately captures the viewer’s attention and helps visitors see the value of your product. You may decide that this headline needs to be front and center on your home page to ensure that every visitor sees it before navigating through your site. If you worked on the design of your website first then there is a chance that the site design may not allow for your headline to be as prominent as you would like it to be.

As you write your content, you will start to consider how you want to tell your brand story and how you can lead your visitors to the content they need. For instance, let’s say that you provide two different solutions – one for consumers and one for businesses. As you develop your copy, you may find that it makes the most sense to create specific CTAs on your home page that direct these two very different buyers to different parts of your site. If you had decided to design your site before writing the copy, you may have not realized that this is the best way to present your messaging to your audience.

4. HubSpot shows that copy-first site design drives better results.

If you’re still not convinced that your redesign should start with copywriting, consider this experiment from inbound marketing experts, HubSpot. They recently tested the design-first method while redesigning their landing pages, and they ended up running into a bit of trouble when it came to influencing conversions.

While redesigning their landing pages, HubSpot took a design-first approach by developing the design and then crafting copy to fit within the design’s parameters. They found that on most of the landing pages, this update lead to higher conversions. However, one landing page showed much lower conversions. Knowing that the design was not the issue, given the success of the other landing pages, the team at HubSpot then started to consider the copy on the landing page.

The copy on the initial landing page was very different than the copy on the newly redesigned page. They decided to experiment a little with the copy, so they updated the newly designed landing page with copy that was similar to the older page. After making this change to the landing page, they soon saw a 20 percent increase in conversions with the revised copy.

One thing to note about the revised landing page copy that HubSpot created is that it focused on the value of the keywords tool they were promoting. While the older copy that was initially crafted to fit the new page design was much shorter and buried the value of the product lower on the page. However, when they revised the copy to emphasize the value that this tool provided the target audience, users responded positively.

This is just one example of how vital copy is to the conversion process. Even with a beautiful design, your pages won’t lead to conversion on their own. Starting with the copy and designing your site around these carefully crafted messages that are tailored to your target audience ensures that your inbound marketing messaging is front and center.

Start with a basic layout for your landing page so that you can focus on creating quality copy before you worry about design.

Take the Next Steps

Now that you know why it’s important to consider copywriting before jumping into inbound marketing website redesign, it’s time to take the next steps toward implementation. It can be hard to create compelling content on your own without a comprehensive marketing team or in-house copywriter. If your company finds itself in this position, you may want to consider partnering with a full-service inbound marketing agency to help you develop the kind of interesting and informative content that will allow your website to thrive.