If you had to make the following choice, how would you choose?

1. A cool-looking, creative, professionally designed website, with crummy content. Or…
2. A plain but clean-looking website full of compelling web copy that makes people want to buy from you.

I prefer the second, because it’s the copy that converts visitors into customers. Good copy will do its job, even if the graphic design is only so-so. Because it’s the message on the page which brings you more clients or turns them away. If you have good copy that draws visitors into your sales process, you can always improve the graphic design. In fact, you can use that copy to fund those improvements.

You can frequently do this with the other elements of your website strategy, too. For example, let’s say you don’t have many people visiting your website. Even with just a few visitors to your site, if your copy draws those visitors into your sales process, your site can be profitable. You can use that money to invest in marketing that draws more visitors. In fact, as we’ll see in the chapter on web traffic, you need to use copy in order to build up a steady stream of traffic.

But if you have bad copy, all the traffic in the world won’t help you. In fact, your copy could actually be turning away potential customers. Without good copy, you could actually be losing money on your website.

Isn’t it ironic, then, that many small-business owners spend thousands of dollars on graphic design, but write their own web copy?

On the other hand, the best sales copywriters are millionaires, because they’ve made much more than that for their clients. That’s the power of good copy.