How To Write Website Copy That Doesn’t Sound Like Everyone Else’s

Open ten Nigerian small business websites and you will read the same page ten times.

We are a leading provider of quality services. We are committed to excellence and customer satisfaction. Our team of experienced professionals delivers innovative solutions tailored to your needs.

Nobody wrote that. It assembled itself. And here is the test that shows why it fails. Copy any of those sentences, paste it onto a competitor’s website, and see whether it becomes false. If it stays true, it was never about you in the first place. It was filler standing where your argument should be.

Most advice about this tells you to be specific and be conversational, then stops. That’s the correct instruction with the useful part missing. Being specific requires having specifics, and here is where you get them.

Your customers already wrote your copy

You do not need to invent language. You need to collect it.

Open your WhatsApp business chats and read the last thirty enquiries. Open your Instagram DMs. Think about your last five sales calls. Now write down, word for word, what people actually ask you.

You will see the same questions repeating. How much. How long does it take. Do you deliver to Ibadan. Can I pay in two parts. Is it the same one they sell at Balogun. Have you done this for someone like me before.

Those questions are the outline of your website. In the customer’s own words, which is also very often the words they type into Google. A page that answers the six questions your customers actually ask beats a page describing your commitment to excellence, and it takes less imagination to write.

Copy their phrasing too. If your customers say generator servicing, do not write power infrastructure maintenance solutions. Somebody decided the second one sounds more professional. It mostly sounds like it belongs to a different company.

Replace every adjective with a fact

This is the single edit that improves most Nigerian small business copy, and you can do it in an afternoon.

Adjectives are claims. Facts are evidence. Go through your site and swap one for the other.

Experienced becomes eleven years and over 400 installations. Fast delivery becomes delivered in Lagos within 48 hours. Affordable becomes packages from 85,000 naira. Trusted becomes 63 reviews averaging 4.8. Quality workmanship becomes a two year guarantee in writing.

The right hand column is harder to write because it commits you to something. That’s exactly why it persuades. Anybody can claim to be experienced. Only you can say 400 installations.

If you genuinely do not have a number for something, that’s information. Either go and find it, or drop the claim. A page with three real facts outperforms a page with fifteen adjectives every single time.

Say what you are not

The most trusted line on a small business website is usually the one that turns somebody away.

We do not do rush jobs. We are not the cheapest, and here is what you get instead. We only work with businesses already making sales, because below that we cannot help you. We do not take on more than four builds a month.

Two things happen when you write that. The people you cannot serve leave early, which saves you both time. And the people you can serve believe the rest of the page, because you have just proved you are willing to say something that costs you. Copy that only ever flatters the reader reads like a sales pitch. Copy that occasionally warns them reads like a person.

Lead with what they want, not who you are

Most homepages open by introducing the company. Your visitor did not arrive curious about your founding. They arrived with a problem.

So instead of welcome to our website, we are a full service digital agency established in 2019, open with the thing they came for. Your site is slow and it is losing you customers. We fix that in two weeks.

The about page is where you talk about yourself, and people do read it, once they already believe you can help. Order matters more than wording here.

Write it the way you would say it out loud

Here’s the fastest editing tool in existence and it’s free.

Read your page aloud. Everywhere you would never say that sentence to a customer standing in front of you, rewrite it as what you would actually say. Utilize becomes use. Endeavor to provide becomes will. In order to becomes to. Prior to becomes before.

Short sentences. One idea each. Break the long ones instead of joining them together. Nobody has ever complained that a website was too easy to read.

Every page needs one obvious next step

Plenty of small business sites explain themselves well and then leave the reader standing there.

Pick one action per page, and make it the easiest thing on the screen. Message us on WhatsApp. Book a call. Get a quote. Not all three competing for attention, and not a bare contact page link at the very bottom.

Then say what happens next, because the fear that stops people clicking is not price, it is not knowing what they are agreeing to. Send us a message and we will reply within a day with a price range and two questions. That sentence converts better than get in touch today, and it costs you nothing to be that specific.

How to check whether it worked

Three tests, in order.

The swap test. Could a competitor paste this page onto their site with nothing becoming false? If yes, it does not say anything yet.

The read aloud test. Anywhere you stumble, your reader stumbles harder.

The stranger test. Show it to someone outside your industry and ask what you do and who you do it for. If they hesitate, the page is not clear, no matter how good it looks.

Get all three right and you will have a site that sounds like your business and nobody else’s, which is the whole point. If writing it is the part you keep putting off, that is what our content and copywriting work exists for, and it usually sits alongside a website build since good copy and good structure are the same job done together.

Frequently asked questions

How long should my homepage be?

Long enough to answer the six questions your customers actually ask, short enough that every line earns its place. Count arguments, not words.

Should I write it myself or hire someone?

Gather the raw material yourself, because only you have it. The customer questions, the real numbers, the proof. A writer can shape that well. Nobody can invent it for you.

Do keywords still matter in website copy?

Yes, and using your customers’ own words handles most of it naturally, since they search the way they speak. Write for the reader first and the keyword usually lands on its own. The heavier search optimization work belongs in your page structure and titles, not in bending sentences around a phrase.

What is the one thing to fix if I only change one?

Turn your adjectives into facts. It’s the fastest change and the one visitors notice most.

Want an honest read on what your current pages are actually saying to customers? Ask us for a free review and we will tell you which lines are working and which ones any of your competitors could have written.