The way to get website content done is to talk it rather than write it: a recorded interview, voice notes between jobs, answers to the questions customers already ask, a deadline with a consequence, and a designer who is allowed to edit. The most common status update on a stalled website project is “waiting on content”. The design was approved weeks ago. The pages are built. Then they sit there with placeholder text while the business owner tries to find a quiet evening to write about themselves, which never comes.
It isn’t laziness. Writing about your own business is hard, and a blank document titled “About Us” is one of the least motivating things you can open after a ten-hour day. The fix is to stop treating it as a writing task and start treating it as a talking task.
Why it’s hard to write your own website
You know your business too well. You skip the things that seem obvious, like which towns you service or whether you do after-hours call-outs, because you’ve said them a thousand times. But a stranger landing on your site doesn’t know any of it.
You also tend to write in the wrong register. People who speak plainly to customers all day suddenly write “We pride ourselves on delivering quality solutions tailored to your needs” the moment they sit at a keyboard. Nobody talks like that, and nobody believes it.
Method 1: the interview session
This is the one we use most. We book an hour, ask you questions about each page, and record it. Then we write the draft from the transcript.
It works because you answer a question differently to how you write. Ask a builder “What’s the difference between you and a cheaper builder?” and you’ll get a specific, honest answer with a story attached. Ask them to write a “Why choose us” section and you’ll get a list of adjectives.
A good session follows the sitemap. For each service page we’ll ask:
- What exactly is included, and what isn’t?
- Who usually books this, and what’s going on for them when they call?
- What do people get wrong or worry about before they book?
- Roughly what does it cost, or what affects the price?
- What happens after they get in touch?
An hour of talking usually gives us enough material for four or five pages.
Method 2: voice notes from the ute
If you can’t sit still for an hour, do it in pieces. Take the content plan for one page and record a voice note on your phone between jobs. Five minutes per page. Ramble, go off on tangents, explain it like you’re talking to a customer on the phone.
Send the recordings through and we’ll turn them into copy. Your phone’s transcription will make a mess of local place names and trade terms, so don’t worry about cleaning it up. The content is what matters.
Method 3: answer the questions customers already ask
Your inbox and your call log are full of website content. Every question a customer has asked you more than twice belongs on the site somewhere.
Spend ten minutes writing down the questions you hear every week. For a plumber it might look like this:
- Do you charge a call-out fee?
- Can you come today?
- Do you service Alstonville, or just Ballina?
- Can you give me a price over the phone?
- Do I need to be home?
Each answer is two or three sentences, written the way you’d say it. That’s half a service page done, and it’s also the kind of plain question-and-answer content that search engines and AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews pick up well.
Method 4: set a deadline with a consequence
Open-ended content deadlines don’t work. “Send it when you can” means never.
What works is a date tied to a decision. Agree up front that if content for a page hasn’t arrived by the date, one of two things happens: we write it from what we know (and you review it), or the page launches later and the rest of the site goes live without it. Either way the project keeps moving.
It sounds blunt, but it saves everyone grief. Nobody wants the site sitting on a staging server for three months.
Method 5: let your designer edit
Send rough material and let us shape it. You’re the expert on your business. We’re the experts on how people read on a phone: short paragraphs, headings that say something, the phone number where a thumb can reach it, and the important bit first.
That means we will cut things. The 400-word history of how the business started usually becomes two sentences on the About page. That’s fine. The full story can live in a blog post or on social media where people who want it will find it.
What you shouldn’t do is edit the draft back into the formal version. If we’ve written “We’ll tell you the price before we start”, don’t change it to “We provide transparent upfront pricing”. The first one sounds like a person.
A word on AI
ChatGPT and similar tools are useful for tidying up your voice notes or suggesting headings. They’re bad at the parts that make you different, because they don’t know anything about you, and the result reads like every other site in your industry. We’ve written more about where AI helps and where it hurts.
How much content do you need?
Less than you think, but more than one line per page. As a rough guide:
| Page | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Homepage | What you do, where, for whom, and one clear next step. 200 to 400 words. |
| Service page | What’s included, who it’s for, process, common questions, price guidance. 400 to 800 words. |
| About | Who you are, how long you’ve been doing it, what you care about. Photo of a real person. 200 to 400 words. |
| Contact | Phone, email, form, service area, hours. Barely any prose. |
If you’re not sure where content fits in the overall timeline, our week-by-week guide to a website project shows where it slots in. Content starts in week two, not week five.
Start with one page
Pick whichever method suits how you work and do one page this week. Just one. Most people find the second page takes half as long as the first.
Some owners would much rather talk than type, and that works too: the interview and the drafts can be built into a website project from the start. Have a chat with us about which pages you’d hand over.