UX Research | Copywriting | Marketing | Blog Writing
June — July 2021
Hostway Rebrand
I wrote content for Hostway’s rebranded website. Working alongside the UX Design Lead, the rewrite and the redesign came together to create a more modern, user-friendly and approachable personality for Hostway. I also wrote a blog post and display ad copy.
How might we…
make the site look and feel more modern and user-friendly?
make the content more relevant to our customers?
make the value of the products more apparent and less jargon-heavy?
Website Copywriting
Evaluation
I started by critiquing the original copy on the website. Would a visitor to the website understand what Hostway does? Would they be convinced to buy their products? How much of this information is up-to-date? Hostway’s customer base is made up of small-business owners, most of whom don’t have extensive IT vocabulary. It was plain to see that the original website was not written with the customer in mind.
Old Hostway website
Some glaring violations:
Heavy use of jargon such as “Mission-critical Saas”, “SSAE 16 SOC2 Type II data centers”, and “AWS, Azure, Hyper-V, VMWare.”
Too much information
Boring writing, layout and visuals
Outdated product information
Undesirable usage of call-to-action buttons
Process
It was crucial to convey to customers the value of Hostway’s products in terms they could understand. This was my process for rewriting the content:
Consult the Product team to determine the most important information and selling points for each product
Collaborate with the Marketing Lead to identify the rebranded voice
Work with the UX Design Lead to ensure the design, images and writing were cohesive and done with the customer in mind
Produce new copy for each page of the new website
Piece the words and the design together, and receive and share feedback with UX and Marketing
Apply feedback and edits where needed
Continue reiterating copy as the website, products and the company changes
Mockups
Hostway Redesigned Website: Desktop view
Hostway Redesigned Website: Tablet view
Hostway Redesigned Website: Mobile view
Blog Post
With Hostway’s Marketing team, I wrote this blog post as part of a strategy to provide more website insights to small-business owners, while also marketing their Website Design Services.
These tips serve as a checklist for customers when building their website, such as:
Adding a contact form so customers can contact you easily
Creating opportunities for microconversions, such as white paper, webinars and other downloadable content
Making your website mobile-friendly
Customers don’t have to tackle building their professional website on their own, and don’t have to worry about not having the tech skills to do. The blog post also mentions how Hostway’s Website Design Services can help customers achieve everything on this checklist with a redesign by talented professional website developers.
Display Ads
Hostway’s original display ads were also in need of a reboot. As the website was being fitted with a new look and feel, the displays ads needed to match the rebrand. The original display ads also featured IT jargon, with a mix of contradicting cheesy jokes, and overall did not have a cohesive brand voice and did not match the website’s personality either.
Old Hostway Display Ads
I created the below display ad copy with the rebrand in mind. These were to appear on other websites our customers were likely to visit, and also marketed Hostway’s Website Design Services.
New Hostway Display Ad 1
New Hostway Display Ad 2
New Hostway Display Ad 3
New Hostway Display Ad 4
Takeaways
Write for the customer
In this case, Hostway’s users are small-business owners from various industries. The copy has to be as universally-digestible as possible in order to cater to small-business owners from any industry who all happen to run a small business.
Provide value first
Of course the end goal is to sell, but when writing with the customer in mind, selling is the last thing you do. The blog post was just one piece of a bigger puzzle of providing more useful content to users, with just hints of how Hostway can help.
No cheese
“Certified hippie HIPAA compliant. We’ve got your back, front and everything in between…”
Leave the cheesiness out, unless that is your brand voice. But maybe consider rebranding instead.