5 Website Copywriting Mistakes That Quietly Cost You Enquiries
Good design gets people to your site. Good copy is what gets them to actually enquire.
A beautifully designed website with weak copy still underperforms. The words on your page are doing the actual selling, and small mistakes in how you write them cost far more enquiries than most business owners realise.
Leading With What You Do Instead of What They Get
“We build custom websites” tells a visitor about you. “A website that actually wins you work” tells them about the outcome they want. Visitors skim for relevance to their own problem, not a list of your services. Every section of your homepage should answer “what’s in it for me” within the first line.
Burying Your Pricing (Or Hiding It Entirely)
Businesses often avoid showing pricing because they’re worried about scaring people off, or because “it depends.” But hiding pricing entirely doesn’t stop people wondering what it costs, it just means they leave your site to go find out somewhere else, usually a competitor’s.
Even a starting-from price, or a clear “packages from £X” structure, keeps people on your site long enough to enquire instead of bouncing to check elsewhere.
Writing for Yourself Instead of Your Customer
It’s natural to write about your business the way you’d describe it to another professional in your industry. But your customer doesn’t know the jargon, doesn’t care about your process in technical detail, and is mostly trying to work out if you can solve their specific problem.
Read your homepage back and count how many sentences start with “we.” Then try rewriting a few to start with “you” instead. It’s a small shift that changes the whole feel of the page.
No Clear Next Step
A visitor who’s interested but isn’t told what to do next often does nothing. Every page should have an obvious, single next action: “Make an enquiry,” “See our pricing,” “View recent work.” Multiple competing calls to action, or none at all, both quietly kill conversions.
Treating Testimonials as an Afterthought
A single generic quote tucked in a footer barely registers. Specific testimonials that mention a real outcome (a number, a name, a situation) do far more work convincing a hesitant visitor than any amount of copy you write about yourself.
The Fix Is Usually Smaller Than It Sounds
None of this requires a full rewrite. Most sites just need a pass through the homepage and top landing pages with these five things in mind. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your current copy, get in touch and we’ll tell you honestly what’s working and what isn’t.