The Beginner Freelance Copywriter’s Guide to Writing Website Copy for Clients

You’re a beginner freelance copywriter and you’ve just started offering and writing website copy for clients… woohoo and also ahhhh!

(We’re scared but we’re excited, right?)

There’s a lot of advice online when it comes to writing website copy for clients, and it can all become a bit confusing and overwhelming as a beginner freelance copywriter when all you want to do is deliver the service, get some great feedback, and send off that invoice.

Before you go flinging your laptop out of your window and taking a trip down Menty B alley, take a deep breath and let’s go over all of the key areas you need to cover to deliver the best website copy for your client!

Let’s dive into The Beginner Freelance Copywriter’s Guide to Writing Website Copy for Clients…

Table of Contents

I’ll keep it brief… not.

Don’t start writing website copy for a client until you have a solid brief, for the love of Ian McKellan!

Before you can do anything at all, you should make sure that you’re fully briefed on the scope of work by the client – it makes both of your lives easier.

For reference, ‘rewrite existing website copy’ isn’t a brief.

Something containing the following information is vital for beginner freelance copywriters because it forms the backbone of how you’ll charge for the project and how you’ll deliver it:

Project overview

• The pages required (e.g., homepage, about us, service landing page, etc)
• Estimated deadline
• What the client hopes to achieve with the copy
• Relevant business information (e.g., PDFs, current web pages, additional resources)
• Design notes (if a wireframe is already completed, or the website copy is to be added to an existing website design)

Business overview

• Business overview (type, size, what they do)
• Primary audience (ideally, they’ll have buyer personas or target audience information)
• What makes their business different, AKA, their unique selling proposition (USP)
• Their ideal tone of voice, whether existing or aspirational
• What problems/pain points their business solves
• Their main competitors 

You can really dive so deep into their business that they’ll be concerned by adding other areas during your website copy briefing that are extremely useful but sometimes overlooked, including:

• Common audience objections (e.g., pricing, poor previous experiences with the industry)
• Social proof (e.g., testimonials and reviews, awards, accreditations)
• The key call to action (CTA), as sometimes this is just assumed to be something like ‘get in touch’ when they might actually want their audience to book a call

Of course, there are a lot of SEO considerations to be made as well, but if you’re not too familiar with optimised website copy or aren’t ready to step into that as a beginner freelance copywriter, it’s best to cover the basics and build on them first.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your freelance copywriter business won’t be, either.

You can click here for a lil’ copywriting brief template you can view to make your life a bit easier, though, and you can pop it over to clients before properly starting your website copy project with any additional bits you fancy.

Top tip: Most clients will generally prefer to provide an overall scope of work (e.g., ‘15 pages of website copy delivered by X date) in your initial communications and then confirm your pricing before they’re ready to fill all of this out – timing is key!

Step 1: Return to the brief, and keep returning to it when writing website copy for clients

Before we dive into any of the mechanics of the delivery of writing website copy for clients, it’s important to acknowledge that it’ll be about as effective as a chocolate teapot if you don’t align it with the brief.

This is important for two reasons:

• It keeps the project aligned with the client’s expectations for the project
• It gives you guidance for the direction of the project

A lot of beginner freelance copywriters will fall into the trap of excitement (understandable) and rush into writing when they’ve read over the brief, dare I say it, briefly.

The best habit you can cultivate right now at the beginning of your freelance career is to be meticulous when it comes to using a brief.

You can do this by:

• Dividing and conquering 

Highlighting specific phrases or sections of the brief that the client has filled out by relevant area (e.g., red = key pain points, yellow = direct customer/client feedback or social proof to use, pink = tone of voice attributes). 

Then, when you’re going along writing the website copy in sections, you can refer to these colour-coded sections for clarity when you’re struggling with which words to use or which areas to highlight.

• Clarifying

If the client has filled out the brief and you think that any areas are confusing or not as complete as you’d like, it’s time to ask sooner rather than later – the last thing you need is incomplete or ineffective information to refer back to when writing website copy for a client.

Make sure your feedback or questions are clear, too. ‘I noticed that you mentioned X as a pain point for clients, but how exactly does this present itself for clients in their day-to-day lives? Could you give me some examples?’.

• Adapting

So much information can be pulled from a brief if you know what you’re looking for. If I see a client writing in the brief that their target audience is generally extremely sociable, tending to be more emotional decision makers, then it follows that a call to action such as ‘book a call’ might be more appropriate to lean into that.

If a lot of the information in the brief is pointing towards an audience that struggles with price as their most significant barrier, a money-back guarantee (obviously if agreed with the client or applicable) could be highly relevant.

Step 2: Clarify your core pages

If there’s one thing I wish I’d learnt back in the early stages of being a beginner freelance copywriter, it’s the importance of conveying to the client the need for specific pages on their website.

Now, this will vary depending on the type of business (e.g., B2B or B2C, eCommerce or service-provider), but generally speaking, you want your website pages to cover a few key bases for the sake of generating trust:

• Their values 
• How their business offers the solution to their audience’s problems
• A ‘human touch’ to show the face/s behind their business
• Barriers to conversion

A lot of business owners or key decision makers might say “We don’t need an ‘about us’ page, just put a page together with the history of our business”, but there are a few reasons why certain pages are actually essential.

Firstly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a business that isn’t operating in a competitive, oversaturated market – out of the hundreds of options out there, why should an audience choose one business over another?

Usually, it comes down to three things – trust, value alignment, and convenience.

• Do we believe in what a business is saying, therefore cost isn’t a barrier?
• Do we strongly align with their ethics and values, so we have an emotional connection? (e.g., being environmentally conscious)
• Do we have easier access, or access in a way that suits us more, to the business and their solution?

That means adding a personal touch to pages that might often be treated as unnecessary, or not important enough to focus on.

I’d consider these pages to be essential (again, this is adaptable based on the type of business, too)

• Homepage 
• About/why choose us?
• Services/product navigation page
• Individual service/product pages
• Contact page 
• FAQs 
• Testimonials/reviews/case studies

I’m not the authority on this… or on anything other than treating food as a therapist, really… but I will say that businesses criminally underestimate how essential areas like FAQs are in addressing audience barriers and giving them what they’re immediately looking for.

Make sure to plan out the page structure before you dive into writing anything because it also influences how you’ll write, as the customer journey influences the direction of the copy too.

Top tip: If the end goal is to get the audience to fill out a contact form, how many touchpoints are required for them to get to that page and take that action? If they have to jump through too many pages to get there, it won’t happen. Keep the journey in mind when writing the copy to keep touchpoints as efficient as possible.

Step 3: Write all copy with the phrase ‘What’s in it for me?’ in mind

Take this with you wherever your beginner freelance copywriter career might guide you… if your audience doesn’t know how the client’s offering helps them, the copy isn’t going to be as effective as it should be.

That might mean a solution to their problem, an aspiration they’re looking to achieve, or a catalyst for a purchase they’ve been waiting to make for a while.

Whatever the reasoning is, the drive behind it is the same – what’s in it for them?

‘We sell handmade bath and body products.’….

Okay, what’s in it for them?

‘We sell handmade, vegan bath and body products that use sustainable ingredients and don’t break the bank.’

One tells them what you do, and the other tells them why they should care in terms of value alignment (sustainability) and action drivers (cost).

Step 4: When in doubt, go back to basics

Whether it’s the above-fold copy (the copy appearing before you have to scroll on a website), or the information on your service pages, it’s important to avoid overcomplicating things to avoid a copy catastrophe.

Put simply, when we land on any website, we’re looking to find out:

• What a business does
• Who they do it for
• Why we should care (benefits, solutions)

Once you’re clear on that, writing website copy for clients as a beginner freelance copywriter becomes an absolute breeze (ish).

It’s not enough to say that a business provides X. Who do they provide X for, in what way is their approach different, and how does their providing of X benefit their audience?

This informs the direction of all of the website copy because it keeps everything aligned to one purpose and the primary audience, so make sure to return to it when you’re ready to tear your hair out.

Step 6: Take all feedback as a catalyst for improvement

I’ll say it hand on heart – when I was a beginner copywriter, I dreaded getting anything other than positives across the board.

But feedback is one of the best ways to learn as a beginner copywriter, and I’ll let you in on a really valuable secret – the second you start viewing feedback as constructive rather than a criticism, your copywriting career will be both easier and more enjoyable.

Sometimes clients won’t know what they don’t like about something, and sometimes they’ll give you a full email worth of reasons why certain elements aren’t their cup of tea; remember that for a client, their business is their baby, and they’re going to be super sensitive about how to handle their baby.

Here are a few ways you can make it easier for yourself:

• Wait a minute!

Don’t start popping in and out of an active document when a client or involved party is commenting on or adding suggestions to a document – wait until it’s complete, otherwise you’ll start to feel overwhelmed and abysmal.

• Take your time 

Take your time reading through each comment or piece of feedback, then take a small break before returning to edit. 

Jumping in to edit right away might mean that you miss certain areas or that you also miss the opportunity to say to the client that you’ve made a specific decision with the copy for a reason (sometimes clients do need to be ‘challenged’ on their edits and reminded of the brief, too!).

• Don’t take it as a reflection of your ability

Receiving a lot of comments can seem like a poor reflection on your work. The thing is, though, that all work starts with a first draft, and it always requires edits and amends to become that amazing final draft. 

Remember that the client wants things to be just right, too, and that the process is collaborative. You might find some compromise in certain areas and have to change others, but feedback is necessary for you to both get what you want out of the project.

• Help your client to give feedback

It sounds odd, but what I mean by that is that often clients will have an awareness of what they don’t like, but they often don’t know why (or why you’ve implemented something to begin with!).

Go into the feedback process with patience and make sure you’re explaining your decision-making process with the copy (e.g., “I’ve added this word in the copy because it’s appeared in multiple reviews, so it’s something your audience values”), and helping them define what they do or don’t like about certain areas.

I bet you’ll hear vague feedback like ‘I want it to be punchier’, or ‘this doesn’t sound right’ at some point, and eventually, you’ll start to recognise that the former feedback usually relates to formatting and pacing and the latter relates to tone of voice – it’s a real balancing act.

You can read my Guide on Giving Feedback to Freelance Copywriters for some extra perspective on this, too!

Step 7: Rejoice! You’re on the path from beginner freelance copywriter to website copy-crier-over

Okay, maybe not crier-over, but definitely closer to feeling more confident and self-assured, right?

The thing about freelancing is, one day you’re Googling 90% of what you’ve been asked to do, and then suddenly you wake up one morning and only have to google 10% because you’ve got the rest on lock.

We all start somewhere!

Need an extra hand with your website copy project?

If you’d like an extra resource, I have my £20 Website Copy Guide Checklist that walks you through the fundamentals of website copy (including some bits you might not have thought of that clients will LOVE).

And if you’d like some hands-on feedback, I offer copy audits starting from £99, which includes reviewing other copywriters’ copy for clients (don’t try saying that three times over).

Just drop me an email or fill out my contact form with a bit of extra info and I’ll get back to you within a day.