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Does Poor Copywriting Spoil a Web Design Portfolio?

I was chatting to the head of a local web design agency recently and he really bought into the value of good copywriting.

Typewriter

One of the things he mentioned was how he thought poor writing on clients’ websites could give potential customers a bad impression of his company if they saw this in his portfolio.

As a copywriter myself, it’s pretty obvious what my view is, but I’d love to hear from you.

If you were looking at the portfolio page of a web design company, would what’s written on each site help form your opinion of that company or would you purely focus on the design?

 

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2 Comments, Leave a comment or Ping

  1. Catherine

    1

    Hi Jamie. I’m also a copywriter, so undoubtedly feel the same way as you do. However, I think that if a client is viewing a portfolio for its web design, they may be prepared to overlook poor copywriting, or may not even notice it!

    Personally, I wouldn’t take a website with poorly written copy seriously, but unfortunately not everyone is as bothered about it as we are! I guess you have to look at it the other way round and ask if we’d be happy to have our work presented on a poorly designed website? The answer is probably not, and it would probably be more of a deterrent to our potential clients than it would be for those of a web designer.

    Having said that, I’ve just launched a website for my freelance copywriting business and it’s far from sophisticated! I’ve only been freelancing for a few months and just wanted to get something up online, so I did it myself on WordPress (I’m no web designer!) Ideally, further down the line I’ll get someone to do it properly, but for now I hope that potential clients will be judging my writing skills and not those in web design. I have to say that it is a bit of a worry though. Fortunately the websites in my portfolio are a bit more sophisticated!

    Have a look if you’ve got a spare moment – http://switchcopywriting.com/ It’d be great to get some feedback! Cheers, Catherine
    Catherine recently posted..The pitfalls of perfectionism

    May 3rd, 2012

  2. Jamie

    2

    Hi Catherine, I responded to your comments over on the LinkedIn group page. With regards to your own website, it’s fine as a starting point. If you’re looking for something a bit more design orientated, there are lots of free WordPress themes around.

    I got my hosting company to tweak an existing WordPress template for this site and it cost me under £100 for everything. I’m sure it could be a lot better design-wise, but I think it does the job.

    Let me know if you want the details for my hosting company, or have any questions about starting out as a copywriter.

    Cheers

    Jamie

    May 3rd, 2012

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