The Hidden Costs of DIY Web Copy, Part 2

Collage artwork of headless businessman with crumpled paper head wearing formal suit making video.

Note: Be sure to read “The Hidden Costs of DIY Web Copy, Part 1″ first.

Even clients who successfully produce initial copy for their website often discover its limitations once they see it integrated into the design. What reads perfectly in a Google Doc might feel completely wrong when combined with imagery and functional concerns such as navigation choices. This realization can lead to extensive revision requests during the design stage, but sometimes additional stakeholders don’t share their opinions until after development is complete—and that’s where copy changes become more costly.

The Budget-Killing Revision Spiral

Fixing a few typos is no big deal at any stage of the process. But when you request significant revisions after development, you’re essentially asking the team to rebuild portions of your website incrementally. Each change might require implementation across multiple pages, functionality testing, cross-browser compatibility checks, and consistency verification throughout the entire site architecture.

What starts as “just a few quick changes” can quickly evolve into days or weeks of unplanned development work. The financial impact compounds rapidly. Premium development time is now being used for copy revisions that a professional copywriter could have handled during the planning phase for a fraction of the cost.

Content Writer vs. Copywriter: A Distinction

Even companies with writers on staff often misunderstand the specialized nature of web copywriting. Content writers and copywriters serve fundamentally different purposes, requiring distinct skill sets that rarely overlap completely. If you have a writer who can do both well, you’ve got something truly special (ahem).

Content writers excel at creating informative, educational material—blog posts/articles, white papers, solution briefs, video scripts, ebooks, and other assets that build authority and provide value to readers. Their primary goal is to engage, inform, and establish your expertise over time.

Copywriters, by contrast, focus on persuasion and conversion. Every word serves a rhetorical purpose: moving visitors through a specific journey toward a desired action. Web copywriting requires understanding of user behavior, conversion psychology, and the technical constraints of digital interfaces. Where content writers might craft a thoughtful 2,000-word exploration of industry trends, copywriters distill complex value propositions into quickly digested headlines and compelling calls-to-action that drive immediate decisions.

The digital environment adds another layer of complexity that even experienced writers find challenging. Web copy must account for how people actually read online—scanning rather than reading linearly, jumping between sections, and abandoning pages within seconds if their needs aren’t immediately met. Traditional writing skills don’t automatically translate to crafting homepage hero text that captures attention in three seconds, or service descriptions that convert casual visitors into potential leads.

Most importantly, web copywriting integrates with user experience design, technical SEO requirements, and conversion optimization strategies. A content writer might create compelling prose about your services, but a web copywriter ensures that prose works within your site’s navigation structure, guides users toward contact forms, and includes the right keywords for search visibility, all while being persuasive above all else.

Having talented writers on staff is valuable, but web copywriting requires specialized expertise that most content-focused writers haven’t developed through their primary work.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Overcoming Oversights

Internal copy efforts typically focus on explaining what the business does rather than addressing what potential customers actually need or want to know. This inside-out perspective creates several unconscious biases that professional copywriters are trained to identify and avoid.

First, internal teams often struggle with the calibration of knowledge or messaging. They either assume too much or too little about visitors who land on their website. Industry jargon that feels natural to your team might be completely foreign to your customers, but over-explaining basic concepts can alienate the knowledgeable buyers who see excessive hand-holding as condescending. Technical specifications that seem important internally might matter far less than practical benefits to casual browsers, yet glossing over details can frustrate serious prospects who need more depth before making purchasing decisions.

Professional copywriters approach your business with an outsider’s point of view and ask these types of questions to help address calibration gaps that can derail engagement with both novice and expert audiences.

Second, DIY copy rarely addresses your visitors’ objections effectively. You may know why customers should choose your business, but you might not anticipate the specific concerns or hesitations that prevent conversions. Professional copywriters research common objections in your industry and weave responses throughout the copy, removing barriers to action that internal teams may not recognize.

Third, DIY copy often lacks competitive context. You might emphasize features that every competitor offers while downplaying advantages that actually differentiate your business. Professional copywriters look at your competitive landscape systematically and position your messaging to highlight genuine distinctions.

Why Professional Copy Delivers Superior ROI

Agency writers work within the web development ecosystem every day. They truly understand technical constraints, SEO requirements, and how copy integrates with design and functionality. When they write a service description, they’re considering not just the words but how those words work within the site’s architecture, conversion funnels, brand voice, user experience concerns, and more.

Small but strategic copy changes can produce significant gains, with businesses routinely seeing conversion improvements by optimizing their site’s headlines, calls-to-action, and messaging. A modest conversion rate boost— from 2% to 3%—represents a 50% increase in sales from the same traffic. Once you contend with that statistic, you see that professional copywriting is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow revenue.

Well-written website copy also serves as the foundation for most other marketing efforts, including email campaigns, social media content, sales materials, and advertising copy. Its value extends far beyond the weight it carries on your website.

Conclusion: Professional Copy Pays for Itself

An agency’s copywriter isn’t involved to inflate your project costs. We’re trying to make sure your website achieves its primary business objective and converts visitors into customers. Professional copywriting is an investment in both project efficiency and long-term business results that delivers measurable results to justify that investment.

Remember that client from part one who “joked” about having ChatGPT handle their copy? It’s now a few months later, and we’re developing some SEO-driven content for them. Turns out, effective AI-generated writing requires the same expertise they were trying to leapfrog—audience research, conversion psychology, SEO knowledge, and the discernment to recognize when any output, AI or otherwise, misses the mark.

Clients who insist on writing their own copy to save money often end up paying for it in more ways that one. There’s always a chance your company would be the exception, of course.

But probably not.

If you’re ready to invest in copy that converts visitors into customers—and pays for itself—let’s explore about how Rare Bird can help your website deliver real results.

Let’s Talk

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