One of your biggest content writing problems is scope creep, think carefully about what you must include, and what you should leave out. Provide all the information they need, but don’t overwhelm them with extra information that they don’t need yet.

In this article I list content that helps customers make their buying decision.

Most of this is obvious once you put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

For instance, positive testimonials from customers who are like you are reassuring because someone like you, had your problem, and now it’s fixed.

People want to understand the process they’ll go through.

Tell them what to expect from you and what you expect from them, this gives them confidence and increases the chances they’ll contact you. Forewarned is forearmed from a customer’s point of view. Ideally, your customer wants you to take them step by step through the whole process, so they know what they’re letting themselves in for.

The process.

What happens after a customer contacts you? If a customer hasn’t dealt with you before, they’ll want to know…

• What days and hours can they phone you?
• How quickly will you return their call?
• What happens after they contact you?
• Will you discuss their work by phone before visiting their premises?
• How do you qualify prospective customers to choose the ones you’ll work for?
• Do you give free quotes?
• How do you quote? Guaranteed fixed price quotes or estimates that could change?
• What price range do you operate in?
• At what point will you start charging?
• What areas do you cover?
• The jobs you do.
• How soon can you do the work?
• What guarantees do you offer?
• Are you insured if something goes wrong?

Contact Us.

Make sure you include all the information customers need when contacting you. If you can, provide several ways to contact you, such as phone, email, and web form, then your customer can use the contact method they feel most comfortable with.

If customers need to visit your premises, include a map, directions, and a photo of your business frontage so they know when they’ve arrived. It’s also good to include a photo of the person the customer will deal with, so they know who they’re talking to.

Most businesses like to keep their contact us page short, but you could put your “the process we go through” information on this page if you wish. Don’t overwhelm them on your contact us page. They’re ready to contact you and just need to know how.

About us & meet the team pages.

Customers don’t want to hear about you, but they do want to hear why you are the best placed business to solve their problem. Your about us page should talk about how your skills and abilities make you the ideal person to do the work your customer needs doing.

Don’t tell them all about your favorite football team.

Do tell them why being a sportsman and a team player means you believe in fair play, honesty and are happy to work as part of a team collaborating with other contractors if your customer needs you to. After writing something on your about us page ask yourself, why should my customer care about that? If the answer is, they shouldn’t, rewrite it in a way that helps your customer understand why this thing about you makes you a better choice for your customer.

Should you display your qualifications on your website?

Above all, customers care about results.

However, if you need qualifications to do your work, tell people you’re qualified. Likewise, if you have certificates that your customers care about, tell them. But don’t come across as pompous or big-headed. For instance, on your about us page you could talk about the great friends you made when doing your PHD. Or you could write an article about an SEO training course you went on.

If it’s useful to your customers, mention it without sounding pompous, aloof, or condescending. If your customers are looking for specific skills and you have certificates to prove you have those skills, display those certificates on your website in a prominent place.

I do this on some of my websites with my Yoast SEO certificates because my customers know what Yoast SEO is, and they feel reassured that I’ve been trained by Team Yoast not only to optimise my customer’s websites, but to use the specific software my customers have installed on their own websites. This helps customers make their buying decision.

And that is what your entire website should do, help your customers make their buying decision and feel confident that they made the right choice when they chose you.

Guarantees.

Selling your services is often about selling your time. Once your time is gone, it’s gone. This makes money-back guarantees difficult. However, anything you can do to reverse the risk and make your customer feel as safe as possible will help you win more work. Most customers treat you fairly, but some try to get more than they’ve paid for.

Whatever guarantee you come up with, make sure it’s fair for your customer and for you. If you sell a training course that’s delivered via prerecorded videos, so you’ve invested your time in building the course, but you’ve invested little time in each specific customer, and refunding the customers money wouldn’t cost you much, other than the lost sale, offering a money back guarantee might be a good idea. Some businesses offer a no quibble 100% money-back guarantee in these circumstances.

A strong guarantee that the customer believes you will honour with good grace will help more customers choose you. Be fair, but don’t encourage people to take advantage of you.

Free stuff.

Sometimes you need a job doing quickly, such as when you need an emergency plumber.

Other times you take longer to choose a service provider, for instance, if you need an extension building for your house. In that case, you may start looking at the websites of prospective businesses weeks or even months before you need to buy the service. Service professionals know this, so they try to get those prospects on their mailing list early, then week by week send them useful information which they hope will make the customer choose them when buying time comes.

The best way to get people to sign up for your mailing list is to provide high quality targeted information. If a prospective customer finds useful information on your website, then sees your offer of a free resource if they join your mailing list, they’re more likely to join.

Make sure your freebie is useful to your ideal customer. For instance, if you’re a copywriter you could provide an e-book “How to Choose a Copywriter”, or “What You Need to Know Before Employing a Copywriter”.

Most useful articles.

Should you link to your blog from your front page? The rule is, if your blog posts are an important part of your sales funnel, you write regularly, and those blog posts are useful to your customers, display some of your blog posts on your front page. Or, if you’ve only written a few blog posts, but those posts are very useful to your customers, link to them from your front page.

If you only have a few poorly written blog posts, don’t put them on the front page. It will give your customers a poor impression of your business.

Service description.

Prospective customers research several businesses before contacting the one they think is best suited to do the job they need doing. And the most important information they need is an accurate description of the service you provide.

So don’t skimp on this.

Your service description is the reason your website exists. Decide which customers you want to attract and what you can do for them. Then aim your marketing at those customers. If you promote yourself as a jack of all trades, you could lose out to a specialist business. So, choose your positioning carefully.

FAQs.

You could have a dedicated frequently asked questions page. But it’s better if you answer your customers’ questions in the appropriate place, as the questions naturally arise on each web page.

For instance, it’s better to place your phone number and email address on your contact us page, not on your FAQ page. There’s no harm in having an FAQ page, but make sure you include all the necessary information in situ on the pages where it belongs, because that’s where your customer expects to find it.

That’s it for this page.

I’ve written more comprehensive content writing guides that span several pages, however, this page is less overwhelming, I hope you found it useful.