Website Copywriting: How to Use Language to Boost Your Brand Credibility

Does your website make a great first impression? If not, you could be missing out on potential customers. 

The language you use on your site plays a huge role in building credibility and trust with visitors. Website copywriting is the art of crafting persuasive, engaging content that resonates with your target audience. It’s about striking the right tone, being clear and concise, and ultimately convincing people to take action.

And believe it or not, audiences pay great attention to how you word things on your website. 56% of customers would avoid brands that make grammar/spelling mistakes. 

To help you avoid this and other hurdles, we’re exploring key strategies for using language that’s great for boosting your brand credibility and making your website stand out. From tone to structure, we’ll prep you with the tools that can elevate your content and leave a lasting impression.

1. Be Personable, Conversational, and Professional

In website copywriting, striking the right tone and voice is a must if you want your brand to resonate with your audience. Being personable and conversational while also maintaining professionalism allows you to connect with potential clients on a human level.

Being too stiff or formal can make your brand seem cold and impersonal. On the flip side, being too casual or unprofessional undermines your credibility as an expert. The sweet spot is a conversational yet polished tone that makes readers feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

Brands that implement this approach create a warm, welcoming atmosphere that encourages engagement and helps demystify the buying process.

How to Do It Right

• Understand who you’re speaking to and tailor your tone accordingly. Is your audience made up of business professionals or aspiring entrepreneurs? Make sure your language addresses their needs and matches their expectations.
• Avoid jargon or complicated terms that could confuse or alienate readers. Instead, opt for simple, clear language that conveys your message concisely.
• Strike a balance between being friendly and maintaining authority. A conversational tone builds rapport, while professionalism ensures credibility.

Let’s take a look at a couple of brands that implement this the right way:

As a platform assisting with the legalities of starting a business, ZenBusiness knows how important it is to provide clear, trustworthy information.

Their homepage copy is concise and approachable, explaining how their services simplify filing for a new business. They remain professional due to the serious nature of their field but use language that’s accessible to those who aren’t well-versed in legal matters.

By combining expertise with a relatable tone, they position themselves as a knowledgeable partner.

Specializing in pergola and pavilion kits, Pergola Kits USA enjoys more freedom to be conversational in its copy. While describing the specs of their outdoor structures professionally, their tone remains warm and inviting.

Their social media posts are particularly effective, sharing relatable content that informs while fostering a sense of community.

This approach makes their products accessible, helping potential customers visualize their dream outdoor space.

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2. Strike a Balance between Simplicity and Detail

Providing too little information may leave potential customers confused about what your product or service offers. On the other hand, overloading them with details can overwhelm and discourage them from taking action.

Striking this balance ensures that your audience receives a clear understanding of your offer without feeling buried in information.

How to Do It Right

• Focus on the primary benefits your product or service offers. Emphasize features that solve your audience’s biggest pain points while keeping the messaging brief.
• Organize your copy with clear headings and bullet points that quickly convey essential information. This makes the content scannable and helps readers retain important points.
• Provide links to more in-depth pages or downloadable resources for customers who want to dive deeper. This way, your landing pages stay concise while allowing interested readers to learn more.

Here’s an example of a brand that nails this strategy. Selling medical alert systems, GetSafe effectively balances simplicity and detail.

On their landing page explaining how their medical alert systems work, they break the content into digestible sections, using headings that clearly hint at the benefits. Each heading introduces a key feature or advantage in an engaging, concise manner.

The accompanying copy is brief but informative, providing just enough detail to explain how the systems address users’ safety needs.

By resisting the urge to overload visitors with unnecessary information, GetSafe keeps its messaging clear and compelling, encouraging further exploration and inquiry.

When done well, this balanced approach boosts credibility by demonstrating you’re an authority who can communicate complex ideas with clarity. It signals expertise without coming across as condescending or confusing.

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3. Highlight Product USP Copy with Smart Icon Choices

Pairing your product’s unique selling proposition (USP) copy with recognizable imagery, like icons or trust badges, is a powerful strategy.

Studies demonstrate that trust badges can significantly boost conversion rates, as they immediately convey reliability and credibility to prospective customers. When combined with short, impactful messaging, these visuals quickly communicate key product features and benefits, making them easier to grasp.

Icons and badges can simplify complex concepts and reduce text clutter, making website copywriting more digestible. They also visually reinforce your USP, instantly building trust and setting expectations.

How to Do It Right

• Choose icons that visually relate to your product’s features or benefits. Ensure they’re simple and universally understood, like a checkmark for quality assurance.
• Use brief, descriptive text that summarizes the USP next to the icon. This enhances comprehension and solidifies the message.
• Apply the same style, size, and design across all icons to maintain a cohesive visual identity.

Transparent Labs, selling natural sport nutrition supplements, does this on their vegan muscle building supplement product page. They include clear trust badges that bolster the copy about their product’s ingredients.

Badges like “no artificial sweeteners,” “no artificial coloring,” and “gluten-free and non-GMO” are presented with concise, impactful messaging.

These badges complement the USP by highlighting the product’s strong points and quality standards. Customers can easily understand the product’s benefits, thanks to this effective combination of visual and textual cues.

By integrating recognizable icons and trust badges with concise USP messaging, you can help your audience absorb your product’s value at a glance and strengthen their confidence in your brand.

4. Captivate with Your Headlines

Crafting magnetic headlines is an often underrated yet vital aspect of website copywriting. With so much digital noise competing for attention these days, your headlines need to stop visitors in their tracks and compel them to read further.

A dull, generic headline does your brand a disservice by underselling the value of what’s underneath. But an intriguing, benefit-driven headline whets the reader’s appetite and boosts your credibility right off the bat. It signals you have something interesting and insightful to share.

By creating a headline that sparks curiosity or addresses a pain point, you establish an immediate connection with your audience and set up the rest of your copy to resonate.

How to Do It Right

• While clever wording is good, make sure your headline clearly conveys the topic or value proposition. Ambiguity can lead to confusion or disinterest.
• Consider your target audience’s preferences, aspirations, and challenges. Craft headlines that resonate with their specific needs and pique their interest.
• Incorporate compelling words like “discover,” “exclusive,” or “secret” that suggest insider knowledge, exclusivity, or value.
• Experiment and test. A/B test different headline formats to see which ones resonate most with your audience.

One example of this strategy is Monsuri, a brand selling bath products and cosmetics. They’re well aware that their audience values self-care. So, their blog post “Self-Care Isn’t Selfish: Prioritizing Your Mental Health” uses language that resonates with customers who may feel self-conscious about buying personal care products.

By framing self-care as a positive and necessary activity, this headline encourages readers to indulge themselves without guilt.

Another great example of this tactic is Everand, an ebooks and audiobooks platform. Everand’s blog post ”What Nobody Tells You About Picking an Audiobook” is quite hard to ignore.

It taps into readers’ curiosity by promising to reveal something they might not know. Even those who aren’t audiobook enthusiasts may feel intrigued to learn what they’re missing out on.

It taps into readers’ curiosity by promising to reveal something they might not know. Even those who aren’t audiobook enthusiasts may feel intrigued to learn what they’re missing out on.

Crafting captivating headlines is an art that can lead to greater engagement and loyalty. By using language that resonates with your audience and piques curiosity, you invite them to discover the full value your brand offers.

5. Implement SEO Wherever You Can

Search engine optimization (SEO) is non-negotiable for boosting brand credibility online. That’s because showing up prominently in search results signals to customers that you’re a relevant, authoritative source on a topic.

The higher you rank, the more credible you appear compared to businesses buried on page 2 or beyond. And since 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, having an SEO content strategy quite literally puts your brand on the map.

Effective website copywriting with an SEO focus helps your target audience discover your solutions at their precise moment of intent. It drives qualified traffic to your virtual front door from people actively seeking out your products or services.

How to Do It Right

• Conduct keyword research to understand how your ideal customers are searching.
• Integrate those high-value keywords naturally into your website’s titles, headings, body copy, image alt text, and meta descriptions.
• But beware of keyword stuffing. That’s a surefire way to turn off readers. Always prioritize a natural, conversational tone focused on providing useful information and solutions.
• Optimize for user intent, not just search bots.

Stripe, an online billing, invoicing, and payments platform, provides an exceptional example of SEO content done right.

From concise value propositions to compelling call-to-action buttons and informative long-form content, their entire website is optimized for search engines.

Google any keyword related to their services, like “online payments,” and you’ll see the results of their SEO efforts. Each page ranks highly and is carefully structured to attract users interested in Stripe’s services, leading to increased visibility and engagement.

6. Let Your Customer Do the Speaking

There’s no better endorsement than real people praising your products or services in their own words.

By letting your customers do the talking, you bypass the perception of bias often associated with brand messaging. Instead, prospective buyers receive relatable and trustworthy information that reassures them of the quality of your product or service. This can significantly shorten the sales cycle, as doubts are often resolved through the experiences of existing customers.

When potential customers read genuine reviews from others who have benefitted from your product or service, they’re more inclined to believe in its value. Testimonials demonstrate social proof, tapping into the idea that if others are satisfied, they will be, too.

How to Do It Right

• Use authentic testimonials from real customers that reflect a range of positive experiences.
• Select testimonials that emphasize key features or benefits of your product, ensuring prospective customers know what to expect.
• Add photos or videos of customers for extra credibility and relatability. Visuals humanize the testimonials and make them more compelling.
• Showcase a diverse set of customer voices to appeal to different segments of your target audience.

As a great example, we’ll take a look at Hootsuite, a social media marketing and management platform that uses customer testimonials effectively on its homepage.

They include a dedicated section where customers praise the service in their own words, highlighting specific features and benefits they found valuable.

These testimonials address key concerns and emphasize the positive impact Hootsuite had on their businesses. By letting satisfied customers advocate for them, Hootsuite provides strong social proof that resonates with prospective buyers.

Letting customers speak for your brand ensures your website copywriting is credible, relatable, and convincing, leading to higher engagement and a stronger reputation.

Final Thoughts

With the right website copywriting strategies, you can harness the power of language to build brand credibility and trust with your audience.

So, start implementing these tactics today and see how thoughtful language can make your website stand out, connect with customers, and boost conversions. Take our advice, and you’ll position your brand as a credible industry leader worth paying attention to.