Writing Website Content for Real Customers: Build a Simple Customer Profile

Build a one-page customer profile before you write a word

Most small business websites are written from the inside out. The owner knows the trade so well that the copy ends up describing the business ("established for 15 years, quality workmanship, competitive prices") rather than the person reading it. A customer profile fixes that. It is not a marketing document with graphs and invented people called "Homeowner Hannah". It is one page, written in plain English, that tells you who you are talking to, what they are worried about and what they need to see before they get in touch. You can build a useful one in an afternoon.

Start with who actually pays you

Do not begin with who you wish your customers were. Begin with the last 20 jobs or sales you completed. Open your invoices, your accounting software or even your phone's call log, and make a simple tally in a spreadsheet. For each customer, note:

• What they bought, and roughly what it was worth.
• What kind of customer they were (homeowner, landlord, office manager, parent, and so on).
• Roughly where they were based.
• How they found you, if you know. Ask your next five customers if you don't.
• What was going on in their life when they rang (a leak, a house move, a failed inspection, a new baby, a business opening).

Imagine a Worthing bathroom fitter doing this. Out of 20 recent jobs, 12 turn out to be homeowners over 55 replacing a bath with a walk-in shower, 5 are landlords refreshing a rental between tenants, and 3 are families doing a full refit. The average job is about £4,800. Before the tally, the owner thought of his customers as "people who want nice bathrooms". After it, he can see that more than half his work comes from one group with a very specific worry: safety and getting in and out easily. His website, which currently shows glossy photos of freestanding baths, has been talking to the minority.

If you are brand new and have no customers to count, use the same exercise on the three or four competitors you most admire. Read their reviews, as that is a free window into who buys and why.

Write your segment sentence

Now squeeze the tally into one sentence. A workable formula is:

We help [who, in a specific place or situation] who [the problem or moment they are in] so they can [what they actually want].

The bathroom fitter's sentence might read: "We help Worthing and Littlehampton homeowners over 55 who find their bath hard to climb into, so they can wash safely and stay in their own home." Compare that with "We help people who want a new bathroom." The first tells you which photos to use, which questions to answer and which words to avoid. The second tells you nothing.

Two tests help. First, could a competitor sign their name under your sentence without changing a word? If so, it is too vague. Second, could you picture three real customers who fit it? If you can't, it is too narrow, or it is a guess.

Collect their words, not yours

This is the step that changes your copy most. People rarely describe their problem in trade language. A heating engineer talks about a "failed diverter valve", but the customer says "the radiators are cold but the hot tap works". If your page uses the engineer's words, the customer won't recognise themselves, and the search they typed into Google won't match your page either.

Gather real phrases from places that already exist:

• Reviews on Google, Trustpilot or Facebook, including your competitors'. Copy the exact sentences into a document.
• Emails, contact form messages and WhatsApp chats. Look at how people open their first message.
• Phone calls. For two weeks, keep a notepad by the phone and jot down the first thing each caller says and the first question they ask.
• Google Search Console. The Performance report lists the queries that already bring people to your site, which shows the words they naturally use.
• Google's "People also ask" box. Search for your main service plus your town and note the questions shown.

If you can spare an hour, ring three recent customers and ask four things: What was happening when you started looking? What worried you? What else did you consider? What made you pick us? Most people are happy to help, and the answers are worth more than any amount of guessing. A quick message through WhatsApp or a three-question Google Form works if people dislike phone calls.

Keep what you collect as a simple "bank" of phrases. A good bank has 15 to 30 short quotes, such as "couldn't get hold of anyone", "didn't want a hard sell" or "worried it would be a mess". These become your headings, your button text and your FAQ questions.

List the top five questions

Every customer arrives with questions, and a page that answers them quietly beats a page that talks about how good you are. Look through your phrase bank and your call notes, and write down the five questions that come up most. For many service businesses they turn out to be some mix of:

1. How much will it cost, roughly?
2. How long will it take, and when can you start?
3. Will it be messy or disruptive?
4. Can I trust you in my home or business?
5. What happens if something goes wrong afterwards?

Your own list will be more specific. The bathroom fitter's might include "Can I get a walk-in shower with a low step?" and "Do you remove the old bath?". Each question deserves a clear answer somewhere on the site, and the price question deserves a real number or range wherever you can give one. A line such as "Most walk-in shower conversions cost between £3,500 and £5,500, depending on tiling and plumbing changes" will put off a few bargain hunters, and that is a good thing. It also saves you time on calls with people whose budget was never going to fit.

Choose three reasons to choose you

"Friendly, reliable and professional" is what everyone says, so it persuades nobody. A good reason to choose you is specific, and a stranger could check it. Try each reason against a simple test: could the customer verify it, and would a competitor struggle to say it truthfully?

• Weak: "Quality workmanship." Stronger: "Every job is photographed before we leave, and you get the photos by email."
• Weak: "Competitive prices." Stronger: "Fixed price in writing before we start. No extras unless you ask for them."
• Weak: "Experienced." Stronger: "Fitting bathrooms in Sussex since 2009, with 140 Google reviews averaging 4.9."

Only use numbers you can back up, and keep them current. A review count that was right in 2022 and is still on the page in 2025 looks careless.

Let the profile set your tone

Tone is simply the way you would speak to this person if they were standing in front of you. Your segment sentence tells you most of what you need. A landlord who owns six flats wants speed, clear pricing and someone who understands compliance paperwork, so short sentences and a brisk, businesslike voice suit them. An anxious 70-year-old arranging a bathroom adaptation wants patience, reassurance and no jargon, so a warmer voice and a gentle explanation of each step suit them better.

A few practical habits keep tone consistent:

• Write to "you", and refer to your business as "we".
• Use contractions ("we'll", "you don't"). They sound like a person, not a brochure.
• Keep most sentences under 20 words. The free Hemingway Editor app highlights long, tangled sentences if you want a second opinion.
• Replace trade terms with the customer's phrases from your bank, or explain the term the first time you use it.
• Read the page out loud. Anything you would be embarrassed to say to a customer's face should be rewritten.

Here is how this works on a homepage headline. Before: "Quality bathrooms installed to the highest standards. Contact us today." After: "Walk-in showers and bathroom refits for Worthing homeowners. Fixed price, finished in a week, and we clear up every evening." The second version names the customer, answers the cost, timing and mess questions in one breath, and contains nothing a competitor could copy without doing the work.

When you have more than one type of customer

Most businesses do. Don't try to blend everyone into one muddy profile. Pick a primary customer for the website as a whole (usually whoever brings in the most work or the most profit), then write a short profile for each main service page if the audiences differ. The landlord page and the homeowner page can share a design but should differ in headline, examples and button text. If you find yourself writing four or five profiles, you probably have two real ones and a few one-off enquiries.

Business-to-business work has a twist: the person who finds you and the person who signs off are often different. An office manager searches for a commercial cleaner, but the finance director approves the contract. Give the searcher practical answers (frequency, insurance, how you handle keys), and give the approver something they can forward (a clear price structure, a one-page summary or a downloadable terms sheet).

One last point: a profile is a working guess, not a fact. Treat it as something to be corrected by real enquiries. If the calls keep coming from someone your profile did not predict, change the profile.

Match the call to action to how ready your customer is

A call to action is only as good as its fit with the person reading it. Someone standing in a flooded kitchen with a burst pipe wants one thing: a phone number they can tap. Put it at the top of every page, make it a clickable link on mobile, and show your opening hours or "24-hour call-out" beside it if that is true.

Making the number clickable is a small technical job that many sites still miss. The link needs to use the tel: format, for example tel:01903123456, written as an ordinary phone number in the visible text. Test it by tapping it on your own phone. If you see a prompt to call, it works. If nothing happens, ask whoever built your site to fix it, because on mobile that is the single most valuable button on the page.

Someone comparing three quotes for a new bathroom is in a different place. They are not ready to ring anybody yet. A short form, a downloadable checklist ("10 questions to ask before you hire a bathroom fitter") or a "see recent projects" link suits them far better. Look back at your profile sentence and ask which of these two people you are mostly writing for. Most businesses have both, so give each a route.

It helps to think of three levels of readiness and give each its own button:

• Ready now: "Call 01903 123456" or "Book a callout today". Direct, urgent, no reading required.
• Nearly ready: "Get a fixed-price quote" or "Book a free site visit". A small commitment with a clear benefit.
• Still researching: "See our recent bathrooms" or "Download the buyer's checklist". Low pressure, and it keeps you in the picture.

A common mistake is to show only the "ready now" button, which leaves researchers with nowhere to go but the back arrow. The opposite mistake is a page covered in five competing buttons. Choose one main action per page and give the others a quieter, text-link style.

Say what happens next

"Submit" tells a visitor nothing. A button that reads "Get a fixed-price quote in 48 hours" or "Book a free 20-minute site visit" tells them what they get and when. Only promise what you can deliver, because a 48-hour promise you miss once a week does more harm than a vague button.

It is worth deciding who is responsible for replying, and how quickly, before you put a deadline on the page. If enquiries arrive while you are on a roof, a simple rule such as "someone checks the inbox at 12 and 5" is better than good intentions. Many people contact two or three firms and hire whoever answers first, so a same-day reply is often worth more than a lower price.

Put the action where the question ends

Don't save every call to action for the footer. Place one straight after you have answered a question. If a section explains what a boiler service costs, the next line should offer to book one. The visitor's curiosity has just been satisfied, which is exactly when they are most willing to act.

On a long page, this usually means a button or link after every major section, not a wall of identical buttons. Vary the wording to suit what the section just said: "Book your boiler service" after the pricing, "Ask us about your boiler" after the troubleshooting advice.

Keep forms short, and test them

Name, phone number and a box for "what do you need?" is enough for most enquiries. Every extra field loses you a few people. Before launch, fill in the form yourself on your phone. Check the confirmation message says what happens next, and find out where the email actually lands (inbox, a shared address nobody reads, or spam).

A few more details are worth checking:

• Does the phone keyboard switch to numbers when someone taps the phone field? If not, ask for it to be fixed.
• Is the "Send" button easy to hit with a thumb, and does it still work if someone leaves an optional field blank?
• Does the form still work on a slow mobile connection, and does it show an error message in plain English if something is missing?
• Do you get an automatic copy of each message, so a faulty email setup does not quietly swallow enquiries for weeks?

The cost of getting this wrong is easy to underestimate. Imagine a site with 400 visits a month. At a 3% enquiry rate that is 12 enquiries, and at 1.5% it is only 6. If one in three enquiries becomes a £4,800 bathroom, the gap is two jobs, or about £9,600 a month, from nothing more than a clumsy form and a vague button. Even if your own numbers are far smaller, the pattern is the same: small fixes at the point of action are usually the cheapest improvements on the site.

Local touches that support the action

For local trades and services, your Google Business Profile often works as your first impression, so fill it in fully. Add accurate opening hours, your services, real photos and recent reviews. Use your real business name, exactly as on your van or signage, with no keywords stuffed in.

Make sure your name, address and phone number match on your website, your Google profile and any directories you use. Small differences ("Rd" on one, "Road" on another, an old mobile number on a third) confuse customers as well as search engines. If you work from home and don't want your address public, you can set a service area rather than showing a street address.

Then write local service guides, such as "What to do when your boiler loses pressure in Worthing", and link each one to your enquiry page. The guide answers the question, and the link gives the reader their next step. Use your phrase bank here. If three customers wrote "boiler keeps losing pressure", that is the title, not "Central heating system pressure maintenance".

Check, test and refresh your profile so it stays useful

A profile only earns its keep if the pages reflect it. Run this five-point check on any page, starting with your home page and your top service page:

1. Does it name the customer, so they recognise themselves in the first few lines?
2. Does it use their words rather than your trade jargon?
3. Does it answer the top question they arrive with?
4. Does it give a reason to choose you over the obvious alternatives?
5. Does it offer one clear next step?

Any "no" is your rewrite list. Fix the first line and the button first, since those two changes usually make the biggest difference for the least effort. Then work down the page.

Test with real people

Read the page aloud to a past customer and watch where they frown or interrupt. Or show it to someone outside your trade for five seconds, then ask what you do and who it is for. If they can't say, a stranger on Google won't manage it either.

Two or three people is enough. You are looking for the same confusion appearing more than once, not statistical proof. Write down what they say without defending the page, and resist explaining what you meant. If you have to explain it, the page needs to change.

Measure a few simple signals

• Enquiry form submissions, and how many are the sort of customer you wanted.
• Calls from your Google Business Profile, shown in its performance data.
• Queries in Google Search Console, which show the words people really type.
• The pages people leave from, which often point to a missing answer or a weak next step.

You don't need a dashboard full of numbers. Check these once a month and note what changed after each edit.

A practical way to do this is to note your figures before you rewrite anything. Write down last month's form submissions, profile calls and the top ten search queries. Make your changes, then wait at least four to six weeks before comparing, because a single quiet week or a bank holiday can mislead you. Also add a simple question to your phone script and enquiry form, "How did you find us?", so you can see which pages and listings really bring in work. If you use Google Analytics, you can set up the form submission and the phone link click as "key events", so they appear in your reports without manual counting. A free tool such as Microsoft Clarity can also show recordings of where visitors stop filling in a form, if you want to see the problem rather than guess at it.

Review twice a year

Look at your profile every six months, and again after any change in services, prices or the area you cover. Add new phrases from reviews and enquiries to your bank of customer wording, since that bank is what keeps your copy sounding like them.

Triggers for an early review include a new service line, a price rise of more than a few per cent, a competitor opening nearby, and a run of enquiries from people you didn't expect. Update the profile first, then the pages, in that order. Otherwise the website drifts away from the business one small edit at a time.

A one-page template to copy

Paste this into a document and fill it in:

• Segment sentence: who exactly they are, in one line.
• Problem in their words: two or three phrases they have actually used.
• Top five questions: what they ask before they choose anyone.
• Three reasons to choose you: specific and provable.
• Primary call to action: the one thing you want them to do next, worded as a button.

Keep it where whoever writes or edits your website can see it. When a page feels wrong, the answer is usually somewhere on that sheet.