Website Content

[britney]

I have been STRUGGLING with writing website content for multiple reasons:
– I haven’t nailed down my branding and am still doing market research to determine my ideal clients’ pain points.
– Ironically, the writing process has always been incredibly stressful and overwhelming for me. I am MUCH better (and more efficient) at helping others improve their writing.
– I’ve also just struggled with how to nail down my services and they seem to be evolving while I am working with non-paying clients to develop my portfolio and experience.
– I am brand new at editing (just did a major, forced career change), have limited formal experience, and only one formal editing course to my name. So I haven’t put much effort into a website yet because I don’t have much to showcase.

I have been brainstorming and playing around with content for my website for a long time, but haven’t ever come up with a solid rough draft. So you can see my messy process of brainstorming content I have uploaded a couple of documents. It’s not all my own writing; some of it is inspiration. You’ll see a section where I have copied the content I currently have on LinkedIn; I may use some of that for my website too.

NOTE: I plan to market my services exclusively to business owners. My ideal client is a woman (most likely a mother) who runs a business related to holistic health and wellness or intentional living.

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[Katie Chambers]

You aren’t struggling as much as you think you are. You have got some solid content here. I have viewed a LOT of editors’ websites, and many of their content is lackluster and does nothing to sell them.

Yours is excellent. It is customer-first language, well-written, follows best marking practices, and is clear and helpful. You have a unique niche, so that is awesome.

Branding feedback:
As I am sure you know, your content is missing the fact that your ideal client is a woman and that you cater to holistic health and wellness or intentional living-type businesses.

On your home page, you can add something like this (this is extremely rough, but just an idea) after the “what I can do for you” section:

As a holistic and naturally-minded mama, I am especially passionate about helping female business owners in the holistic health and wellness and intentional living niches. I would love to be a part of helping you reach more customers, so you can improve their life.

Then you could opt to have TWO service pages: one for any business owner and one for those who operate a holistic health and wellness or intentional living business.

On the one for your ideal client, before you list the services, you can speak directly to their needs. Something like, I applaud you for stepping up to help so many women improve their lives, and if you’re also a mom, I know how overwhelming it can be to do it all. Let me help your content shine, …. (list a few unique ways your editing will help them).

Home Page Feedback:

When you first launch your website, you may just want to create a quick one-page one just to get something up an running. In that case, you will have everything temporarily on the home page.

But when you get your full website, I suggest only having the green content on the home page. Explain your editing process on another page.

On the home page, I would let the “what I can do for you” section be the problems you solve, which is what you currently have. Then on the service pages, you can have the actual things you do.

The line “we tend to proofread our own creative work with our heart rather than an editor’s eye” can be moved to the service pages .

Editing process feedback (not content feedback so much as editing best practices feedback):

Based on the notes you have on the editing process, it seems you are offering every type of editing. That is completely fine; however, I do not suggest you proofread the same manuscript you edited. That is considered a big no-no in the professional editing world. The proofreader should always be a different set of eyes. So you can offer all service types, but then make it clear if they hire you for the editing, then they will need a different proofreader, and if they hire you for proofreading, then they will have first needed their manuscript professionally edited by someone else.

Service page feedback:

I love the light, medium, heavy format and the descriptions underneath them are great. I will say that I would be careful about how you describe your three passes in the developmental editing package. The way it is currently worded, it sounds like it is not just developmental editing, but a package of ALL three types: developmental in the first pass, copy edit in the second pass, and proofread in the third pass. So based on this, it reads like you don’t offer developmental editing as a stand-alone service. It is just part of a package deal, which is fine, but then I would clarify that. I have found, and most editors will agree, that developmental editing takes two passes. You can’t fully reorganize content, delete redundancies, and recommend areas they need to expand on the content until you have edited the whole thing. You can certainly make developmental changes along the way in the first pass, but will need to make more in the second pass. So with developmental editing, I wouldn’t send it to the author until you have finished two passes.

1st pass: developmental edit
2nd pass: additional developmental edits with copyediting
Send to author
3rd pass: clean-up pass (don’t call it proofreading because as I said the proofreader should be a different person, but it is just additional copyediting).

In your description of developmental editing, you have wordiness and weak sentence style, but those are the same as conciseness and sentence structure in copyediting, so you can just say, this heavy edit involves everything in the copyediting service PLUS then describe developmental editing.

Unless the developmental editing package does NOT include grammar, punctuation, and such and is just stylistic type copyediting and then developmental editing.
In that case, you can keep the description as is, and then describe the passes this way:

1st pass: deep dive edits
2nd pass: additional deep dive edits
send to author
3rd pass: stylistic line edits

[Author]

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