OK, I don't usually spend this much time doing free critiques but I can give you my comments (which are just that, only my opinions) on your copy.
But first you should decide if you want to go with a personal touch or with a corporate touch. Usually companies selling services do better with a personal touch and companies selling products with a corporate touch, but there are exceptions of course.
If you want a personal touch, do this:
* Don't use "we" as you reference to your company, use "I"
* Tell your name and introduce yourself shortly. Something like: "I'm John Smith, I have been a professional website designer for x years and worked with z clients. Some of my clients include Company A, Company B and Company C" With the company names as links to your portfolio page.
* Use a relaxed language, you can also add humor to your text but use good taste. You don't want to make the visitor laugh but smile.
* Consider adding a photograph about you to the front page, or at least to the About Us page. You can also write your own blog and show it as a section of your site. Blogging is a great way to create personal touch and content to a site.
If you want a corporate touch, do this:
* Always use "we", "our" and "us", never "I".
* Don't introduce yourself as a person but as a company. Something like: "Realworks is a web design studio with a solid experience of x years. We have worked with z clients, some of our clients include..."
You can also shoot for something between these two but be careful if you do that.
But, about your copy:
"Professional Web Design in London and the Surrounding Areas"
Is your business somehow focusing to local UK customers? If it's not, the pre-heading could be hurting your sales. If you want to attract both local and global clients you should say something like "Professional Web Design located in London, UK", or similar.
I covered the main heading in my previous message.
"Our aim is to provide sound solutions that achieve results and develop relationships based on friendship and trust."
As I said before, this is too vague, it doesn't really say anything. The sub-heading is usually the second most important element of your copy, you should put more spice to it. How about something like: "With x years of experience we know what makes a website successfull, do you?" If you want to sell something, you should most often format your heading or sub-heading as a question and also answer it.
"Professional web design and development is what we are all about; providing pukka web designs with a considered approach to code and navigation. We draw upon all our acquired knowledge when developing any website, ensuring the end result is user-friendly, fast, object orientated and generally fit for purpose. Ultimately it is about ensuring our clients receive excellent ROI, positive feedback from the users and feel valued… because they are."
You should start with a short introduction, one or two sentences would do just fine. As I said before, don't use too difficult words nor buzzwords, this rule escpecially applies if you try to get foreign customers. People abroad don't often have very good skills in English, using too difficult language can make them stop reading and leave.
For example, the second sentence starting with "We draw upon" is very complicated for a non-English person, I do understand what you are saying but many people simply wouldn't get it. And as I said before, you write with too long sentences. How should you know when your sentences are too long? It's simple: read your text out loud, this usually shows you when a sentence feels too long.
And don't write long lists with commas, bullet lists (ul and li tags) are a great way to grab attention. If your list has over 3-4 items, you should use a bullet list instead. Of course, you don't want to have too many lists either but you should usually have at least one.
"We love what we do… there has never been anything else for us. Websites, online marketing, design… we live and breath it. Our progressive culture keeps us ahead of the curve ensuring professional web design for today and tomorrow and providing flexible solutions as opposed to pre-packaged products."
I wouldn't use those three dots like that, and not twice in a same paragraph. Three dots are good for sentences that have a meaning like "think about that" or with links that mean "you really might want to see this for more information".
The second sentence "there has never been anything else for us" sounds a bit strange to me. To me, it sounds almost like you are desperate, "we have never had a chance to do anything else" comes to my mind. While you should say something that would make me think "wow, these guys must be really good in what they do", or "wow, they really do love what they do".
You again use too vague language for my taste. I'd rather talk about the benefits, and why you are the best of your industry, why the customer should hire you to do the job.
You almost have a benefit in your second paraghraph, the "
flexible solutions as opposed to pre-packaged products" part. You should almost always talk about benefits, not the features. Of course, you can list features in a sub-page but your main copy should focus on the benefits. Benefit means how the feature benefits the customer. Usually the best benefits are the ones that: make money for the client or save the clients time.
For example:
"All our designs are custom made and we don't use any pre-made templates" is a feature of your service. But this is a benefit:
"We design your website the way you want it and without using any pre-made templates, this ensures your brand new website looks unique and helps you to grow your business."
A good rule of a thumb to determine if your sentence is a feature or a benefit: does it say "us" and "we", or does it say "you" and "your"?
"Offering professional and reliable after sales support is very important to us, because we know it is very important to our clients. Often more so than the initial development, most clients don’t realise this until they require additional support."
You are again talking about features, convert these to benefits.
"Ensuring that our clients’ sites run like clockwork, ahead of updates, browser changes, server downtime and on top of search engines is an integral part of what we do. Not simply an after thought as and when we have the time. If we can keep our clients happy, then we receive new business through referrals. Which is where most of our business comes from."
The first sentence is just a mouthful, and you again talking about features.
"Invite us for a chat (black tea, no sugar thank you) and we will be happy to discuss your ideas and objectives."
This is the best paragraph so far. First of all it's short. When the user sees your first paragraphs they seem a bit too long to read, the the user starts scrollin. "Do I find something interesting from this page?" he/she wonders. But then, a short paragraph that has a bit of humor in it. This can make the user to think that there might be something more funny things in your copy, perhaps I should start to read it from the beginning.
"Invite us back and we will provide you with a bullet point, jargon free web design proposal and quote, bespoke to your organizations requirements."
This paragraph counterdicts many things you wrote before. I mean the "jargon free" part. Because your previous paraghraps were quite far from "jargon free". Trust is a critical element of a website that tries to sell. If you counterdict yourself it always hurts your credibility, even small things like this.
"All being well, we can then create a concept design and move ahead with refinements and development. We would like to continue working with you and updating your online presence after the initial design and development as we currently do for many clients."
I don't quite understand this paragraph. I know what you are trying to say, you are kind of writing about your sales process, "invite us to tee (remembe, no sugar, thanks
), we write you a jargon free proposal and then we can get busy". But I don't quite know if it fits well to a front page, or whether you have to use so many sentences to it. For example, you could leave this paragraph away entirely, that way you would still describe your sales process enough for the customer.
Summary: Use shorter sentences, no difficult words, add at least one bullet list and have one or two h3 headings (if h1 is your main heading and h2 as the sub-heading) and don't talk about your features but your benefits.
Also, your copy would perhaps need a solid call-to-action feature. After you have convinced the visitor that you are really good in what you do there should be an easy way for the visitor to contact you. Maybe a simple form (or a link to one) which potential clients could use to ask for a quote. And before the form (or the link to it) you would need a spicy h3 heading and one short paragraph.
Something like this:
Ask us how we could make your website more successful
If you spend a minute of your time to fill in this form, we can tell you how we could make your website more appealing and successful.
[Form that asks a few questions, such as name, contact e-mail/phone, current website address and a box for comments]
[button: "Request a free quote now!"]
Also, you should perhaps think about making the font of your copy a bit larger. Texts with a bit larger font are much easier to read and convert much better.
One last thing: If you wish to apply any of these suggestions I would highly recommend you to do a/b split testing to see what works the best. For example, keep your current copy as it is, then write the new copy per my suggestions and split test them: show the original copy to 50% of visitors and the new one to the other 50%, monitor which one gives you more price queries.
I hope this helps.
