⚡ Don't publish your copy before you've done these sweeps

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Hello there 👋

A few quick bits of housekeeping before we dive into this week’s email…

We’re now booking projects for the end of July/start of August. If you’ve got a copy project you need a hand with or your brand voice needs some love, let’s chat 👋
We’ve just launched a new service that’s a super-affordable way to get our eyes (and feedback) on your copy.

TLDR: we realised last week that the single most impactful bit of any project is almost always the copy audit we do at the beginning.

Because while the shiny new copy or the brand voice or the new messaging get all the glory, walking people through why their copy isn't quite landing how they want it to helps them a) understand why we're going to make the changes we make and b) learn to spot the little fixes when they crop up in the future.

So we thought: why not offer it up as a service?

Et voila! You can now book a personalised video audit of any page (or pages, if you've got a small site) and we'll get back to you with a 20-minute video where we break down what’s working, what’s not quite working and some quick wins you can do to make your copy really sing.

👋 Psst. If you want to see Jack expertly pretending to do an audit of a website. It's positively Pacino-esque.

☝️ Jack after winning the school's "Best Actor" trophy in Year 7.

Full disclosure: we’re not going to pretend we have some Secret Sauce™ with a trademarked name to get you to book an audit. (That's a pet peeve of ours.)

And even though we've got a process, 17+ years of experience and a bit of a nose for where copy is not quite landing, if you've got time and you know what to look for, you can do a really decent audit of your own copy in 30 minutes or so.

Here’s how to do it yourself 👇

💡 This week's big idea: writing your copy and auditing your copy are two separate beasts. But the best copy comes from doing them one at a time.

There are two camps around the idea of copywriting.

One is all cold theory and Don Draper-y old school stuff and "every word needs to be engineered to make a sale"-ness. Really analytical and academic stuff that is super important but can make copy a bit robotic and lifeless.

The other camp is more about vibes. It's about dialing up the voice and having fun and giving your copy life and energy and a sense of humour so it's the kind of stuff people love to read.

The trick is to blend them so you're getting the best of both worlds.

The tricky part of the trick? Writing something that's on-brand, doing all the clever copy stuff, has social proof and tangible headlines, making sure it connects... all at once is really hard.

In fact, recent fMRI scans show that when our creative brain (known as our default mode) and our analytical/editorial brain (known as Executive Control mode) compete for brain space, we can't function very well.

But when we let them take them in turns, that's when we do our best work.

In other words, the best way to write copy is to go all Hemingway and embrace the shitty first draft.

That's where you can have fun with the copy, get creative, find interesting new angles and ideas for the copy, come up with exciting new ideas...

Then, when it's done, that's when it's time to engage the editorial part of your brain and review the copy to make sure it's doing its job properly and make the tweaks and edits that really get it popping.

So let's break down how to do that 👇

Quick kudos: our own editing process started as a straight rip-off of Joanna Wiebe's 7 Sweeps. Major hat tip to her. But she works mostly in the SaaS and B2B space, so we created our own version that works for ecomm, lifestyle and mission-led brands.

Sweep 1: Will a cold visitor get your brand or product in 5 seconds or less?

Remember how we talked about clarity and simplicity boosting conversions by 56% a few weeks ago? That's why it's so important to zoom out and look at your copy.

Ask yourself: is what I’m saying as clear as it can possibly be to the reader? Are there any parts that are confusing or otherwise just a little muddled? Are we using insular language that the customer won’t immediately understand?

Then dig deeper: are you using concrete, tangible language? Am I making the customer the hero of the copy? Am I speaking directly to their needs or are we focusing on the brand too much?

🔧 Quick fix: if your copy isn't quite as clear is it can be, start by checking the reading age. Bringing the reading age down to 9-10 years old (Grade 5 or 6 in Hemingway) not only makes it 56% more likely to sell, it also helps remove words that can muddy your message.

Sweep 2: could another brand say this in the same way?

OK, now you’ve got your messaging crystal clear, it’s time to make sure it's on-brand. Read it all again.

Does it sound like your brand? If your logo was taken away, would people know these words were written by your brand? Is it packed full of your brand personality? Do the words you’re using and the stuff you’re saying match up with your brand values and identity?

🔧 Quick fix: if your copy feels a little personality-lite after the clarity sweep, go back to your original draft. Are there any bits of copy that, even if they're not technically perfect, help tell a customer who you are and what you believe? Add those back in.

Still not quite hitting? Try doing the chatty rewrite. Rewrite a few lines as if you were chatting to a friend. How would you say them then? 👈 that's always a great kick-off point for dialing up your voice.

Sweep 3: why should anybody care?

OK, now imagine your customer is a stroppy teenager. You’ve just read them your copy they’re looking at you that “yeah, and what?” look on their face.

Does your copy do everything it can to make sure that your reader can’t say “so what?” after they’ve read it?

Have you talked about benefits not features? Have you addressed your customers directly? (Makes morning routines quicker vs Makes your morning routine quicker.)

Ultimately, would a customer read the page and know immediately that "this is the product for me"? Or are you leaving them to fill in the gap between what you're telling them about your products and how it'll make their lives better?

🔧 Quick fix: most of the time when your copy isn't quite passing the "why should I care" test, it's because you're trying to include too much information about the product. Try introducing a red thread that ties everything together and making that your key message. Remember: the key to making people care is the rule of one. One message written to one person with one CTA.

Sweep 4: Why should I believe you?

We all know the value of social proof (97% of consumers look at reviews before buying a product) but it's very easy to forget it when you're using that creative part of your brain.

When you're doing a sweep, ask yourself: are we backing these things up? Are we using testimonials that line up with our messaging to tie it all together? Do we have more than one kind of social proof (quotes, badges, press logos...) Are we using social proof (star ratings, press logos, etc...) near all of our CTAs?

If not, go and add them in. It's a super quick job and it makes a huge difference to your conversion rate. (One study found adding social proof can boost conversions by 270%.)

Top tip: Add in social proof microcopy near calls to action. Near a CTA, add some social proof along the lines of “trusted by 10,000+ customers” or “Rated ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by 5,000+ customers.” Not only does this help alleviate that split-second of doubt, but it uses the Bandwagon Effect, a cognitive bias where we’re more likely to trust brands that other people trust.

👀 A potential social proof trip hazard to look out for

Be careful that the social proof you're using doesn't actually hurt your conversions.

Our brains give greater importance to things that have happened recently than things from a while ago. (This is called recency bias.)

Which means that if you won a Gold Taste Award in 2023 or got a banging customer testimonial a few years ago, it can actually make customers think things like:

"Oh, it didn't win in 2024, so there must be a better product I can buy." or "Oh, this review is from a few years ago, why aren't there more recent reviews.

That doesn't mean you can't use those bits of proof, just make sure you remove the date from quotes. Or say things like "Winner of a Gold Taste Award".

Sweep 5: are you painting a picture in your customers' minds?

One of the easiest ways to improve ecommerce copy is to make the benefit concrete and tangible. To make the customer imagine using your product.

☝️ Your customers after reading your copy.

In fact, a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that using tangible, specific, and vivid language makes customers more satisfied, more trusting of the brand because they’re confident, and—most importantly—more likely to buy.

That’s because concrete language taps into our brain’s imagery-processing systems. And when your customers can clearly picture the benefit or experience of using your product, their decision-making process becomes easier and more emotional. AKA, when you describe something with specifics, your customer can see themselves using it.

Have another look at your copy and ask yourself can our customers see, touch, or imagine what I’m talking about? Are we using tactile, sensory words or specific language?

If the answer isn't a resounding yes, you can probably dial it up a bit.

🏆 See concrete language in action

Let's take a super basic brief of writing copy for an insulated coffee cup and write three lines: not-concrete, kinda-concrete and concrete AF.

🟥 Insulated to retain heat for up to 5 hours

🟨 Keeps your coffee hot for 5 hours

🟩 Busy day at work? Weekend hike along windy coasts? Sip coffee as hot as when you made it with our new insulated mugs.

Now, granted, that last line is a bit long and needs an edit, but see it helps you picture the mug as part of your life? Not as just a mug, but as something you can picture using. That's HUGE for making sales.

But, frankly, even introducing copy like the kinda-concrete line is going to make a difference to your copy if you're starting with not-concrete copy.

Sweep 6: are you going beyond facts and into feelings?

When you’re writing copy and thinking of all of the benefits and features you need to include or the personality it needs to convey, it’s easy to forget about making an emotional connection.

But we buy with emotion and justify with logic. So we need to make sure that everything we write is making a connection.

Are you using emotionally-charged words? Are you talking to your customer about THEM and not your product? Are you speaking to what they're feeling? Are you making them feel like "oh shit, this brand gets me?".

🔧 Quick fix: rewrite any negative framing as positive framing.

Using positive language has been found to trigger the release of dopamine, which gives us feelings of pleasure and motivation. AKA, when we see positive language, we’re more receptive to taking action and clicking that buy button.

So look for anywhere where you might have strayed into pain points or negative framing and turn it into a benefit instead. (We wrote a handy how-to on that a while ago.)

Sweep 7: do I feel safe buying from this brand?

This is the last step. You want to eradicate any niggling doubts the person might have that are stopping them signing up or buying.

It might be a matter of adding testimonials to show that lots of people have bought your stuff before, and therefore you can be trusted. Or press logos that have talked about you.

But most of the time, it’s about removing the fear of a worst-case scenario. "If I don't like this, what can I do?"

In fact, nearly 20% of online shoppers abandon their carts because they don’t feel confident about the return process.

That’s bonkers.

Around a fifth of your potential sales could vanish in an instant because your policy is confusing, intimidating, or buried in legal jargon.

Here’s where a slight change of mindset can make a massive difference: your return policy page isn’t just a legal requirement now, it’s a massive marketing tool. If almost 20% of your customers are going to check it out, changing it up is a huge quick win to turn every “What if I don’t like it?” seed of doubt into an “I trust this brand to have my back.” decision to buy.

🤝 Three quick wins for doubt-defeating trust signals:

Clarity rules: Ditch the legalese and opt for simple, friendly language like: "If you’re not 100% happy, return it within 30 days. No drama.”

Generosity wins: Your customers are busy. The last thing you want is a customer realising they’re stuck with your product because they ran out of time. Instead, make policies that go above and beyond to put the customer first. Zappos offers a 365-day return policy and has built a reputation as a bastion of customer service. Love that.

Shout about it: Your refund policy shouldn’t be buried in the footer. Highlight it on product pages, in emails, and during checkout. Show the customer that "we're so proud of our customer service, we'll shout about it".

📚 Want to dig deeper? We wrote a deep-dive on this a few months ago.

OK, this is where Joanna Wiebe's ideas end and ours begin.

But to be honest, at this stage, if you go and implement the 7 sweeps above, you're going to end up with really, really strong copy.

That said, these next two things are the things we look for when we're trying to take something from good copy to great copy. To take copy from a player in the space to The Player in the space.

Here's how we do it 👇

Sweep 8: Are we really standing out?

One of our favourite quotes about messaging is this quote from Jason Fried, CEO at Basecamp and Hey:

What does it say when tens of thousands of companies are saying the same things about themselves?

When you write like everybody else and act like everybody else, you’re saying “our products are like everybody else’s too”.

In other words, there's more to how a customer interprets your copy that just the words you put on the page.

Your copy also exists in relation to what your competitors are saying too.

Which means that even the most technically perfect copy (that ticks all of the seven boxes above) can fall flat if it sounds like every other brand in your space.

And when all brands sound the same and position themselves the same way, you end up in a race to the bottom to compete on price and sales and discount codes, yada yada...

🔍 How to spot if your brand saying 'our product are just like everybody else's too'?

If you’ve got 15 minutes and want to find out how much of what you're saying is making you blend in with your competition, here’s a quick little exercise you can do 👇⠀

Copy and paste some copy from your brand’s website and from two or three competitors’ sites into a document.

(If you want to go deep, take something from your homepage, your about page, a blog post and a sales/services/product page.)
Go through and anonymise the text (remove any identifying words: product names, brand names, locations, dates…)
Ask a colleague or friend to read over them and see if they can tell which one belongs to your brand. (And which ones belong to your competition.)

If they can immediately spot your brand, bob's your uncle! That’s a fantastic sign. Ask them what words/sentences gave it away and note their answers down. That’s the messaging you can double down on to stay distinctive.

If not (or if they have to take an educated guess): you might want to think about ways to make your brand's messaging a little more distinctive. Could you have more character? Could you lean into different aspects of your brand? Could you work on your positioning?

In other words, what can you say that isn't a cliche of your category? What's your Big Bold Opinion that you can start to weave into your copy?

Sweep 9: Will I remember this after I've closed the tab?

On average, 95-98% of your customers won’t convert the first time they land on your website.

That’s not because your copy isn’t persuasive enough or that you're not doing your job properly. It’s because they weren’t ready to buy yet.

Which means the job of your homepage (or PDP or landing page or whatever else) is often not necessarily to make the sale… it’s to make customers commit you to memory so you're top of mind when they are ready to buy.

(And with 20-40% of all ecomm sales coming from repeat customers, making sure you're memorable is the easiest way to turn a one-off visit into recurring revenue.)

In fact, Byron Sharp’s research in How Brands Grow shows that mental availability — AKA the likelihood your brand springs to mind when someone needs what you sell — is a far stronger growth driver than even the most persuasive copywriting.

That's why our last sweep — the one that we really look at — is about asking "is this sticky?"

Can we remember the headline or the positioning or a Google-able fact so we can find the brand again once we've left the page?

Our friends at Toast Brewing have absolutely nailed this 👇

✅ A play on their brand name in a big h2 and the last line so they're in the two statistically most-memorable places? Smart.

✅ Alliteration to make the bread of it all more memorable? Double smart.

✅ Focusing on beer brewed with bread and eco-friendly credentials? Triple smart.

From a quick 5-second scroll down the Toast homepage, you have all the information to remember them and enough curiosity piqued to want to try them out. (There's loads of social proof too 👏)

🔍 How to check the stickiness of your messaging

👉 Have you broken any expected patterns in the way you've phrased things? Have you written anything in a novel way? Broken an industry taboo? Novelty leads to stickiness.

👉 Have you got a repeatable phrase or play on words you can come back to? Is there a clever pun or phrase you can weave into your copy?

👉 Are you grabbing attention? Using tricks like a well-placed swear word can make your message stickier and more memorable. Oatly are the masters at this.

👉 Are you sticking to one core message? Go back to that idea of the red thread from earlier and look again. Is it clear from one look down your page what the key message is? If so, is that message distinctive enough that people will remember you?

If you're doing all these things and it still isn't quite right, it might be time to zoom out and look at your positioning. (Check out this article if that's you.)

Phew. 😮‍💨

That became a bit of a tome, didn't it?

(Especially ironic considering last week's message about brevity...)

But we wanted to pack as much information as possible into this email so you had a go-to resource next time you're about to hit publish and are hit with those last-minute "is this really ready to go live" wobbles?

Instead, we want you to hit publish and feel like this 👇

We've been desperate to use this gif for years.

Want a second set of eyes on your copy?

With everything we've included in this email, you can audit your own copy to a really, really strong standard without needing anyone else at all.

However, if you're strapped for time or feel like you're too close to it or want to tap into 17+ years of experience writing copy... that's what we're here for 👋

All you need to do is send us the page you want feedback on (live page, Google doc, Figma link, whatever...) and we'll send you a 20-minute async walkthrough, packed with real-time edits and suggestions you can implement straight away.

All completely async (AKA no need to find a time that works for everyone) and back in your inbox within 2 working days.

Oh, and if you don’t think your video doesn't provide enough value, you get a full refund. (Because see Sweep 7).

→ Sound good? Book your video audit

See you next week for more ways to do words gooder!

Peace and love ✌️

Jack and Joe

co-founders, co-brothers and
co-pywriters at Do Words Good

PS. Want to do words even gooder? Here's how we can team up. 👇

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