The design is approved, the build is finished, and the new site is sitting on a staging server, ready to go. Then it waits. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, for the words that are supposed to fill it. When one of our projects runs late, missing content is the most likely reason, and most of the time it’s the page copy.
Our guide to what to expect during a website redesign mentions the content bottleneck in passing. Here we look at why it happens, who should write your website content, and how to launch without waiting for every page to be perfect.
What counts as content
Page copy is the big one, but a redesign asks for more than words, and each piece has its own way of holding things up.
What the Site Needs From You
- Page copy stalls for reasons we’ll get to below, and it’s the item most likely to be missing at the end.
- Case studies need their own format to be effective, as we covered in turning your work into proof. They often need review by senior management, and sometimes by legal, before they can go live.
- Team bios stall for a different reason. The person assigned to them rarely knows the personal details of every employee, so they ask each person to write their own. That solves the first problem and creates a second. Ten bios come back in ten different styles, tones, and lengths, and someone then has to rewrite them all to sound like one company.
- Photos can be worked around at first, using placeholder images while the page is built, but they bring delays of their own, which we cover below.
Why page copy takes longer than anyone plans
We call it the email fallacy. Whoever takes on the copy assumes that because they write emails every day, they can turn around a product page in 15 minutes. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. Web copy is a different kind of writing, with its own structure and its own job to do. For someone who has never written it before the task can be overwhelming.
An email is quick to write and a web page isn’t, because a web page involves far more steps, and each one takes time.
Where the Time Goes
- 1Gather the facts
From the people who know the product, the process, or the client. - 2Decide what the page must prove
To the buyer reading it, not to the people who wrote it. - 3Draft to the page’s structure
Section by section, at the length each one calls for. - 4Cut and tighten
First drafts usually run longer than the page can carry. - 5Review and sign-off
Accuracy checked, then approved by whoever owns the page.
The second reason is simpler. Most website copy is written by people who aren’t dedicated copywriters. They’re often marketing directors or sales managers, and sometimes the task falls to an office administrator. Whoever it is, they already have a full schedule with their existing job responsibilities. The website becomes one more task on an overloaded plate, and because of the sheer size of the job, it slides to the bottom of the list every Monday.
We have so many project examples we could cite where this has been the case, for a variety of reasons. We’ve had projects sit for 3 months or more waiting on legal approval of key service pages. During one recent project, there was a 9-month delay due to several key staff changes. And the worst delay of all (if you can even believe this) was 28 months from the site being fully built to the final piece of content being approved for launch. That means that the client lost over 2 years of use from the new website, simply because they couldn’t decide amongst their team on the phrasing of some of their service pages.
Why the usual fixes don’t work
We’ve tried the standard defences, and we’d be doing you a disservice to pretend they solve the problem. They help a little at best.
- Deadlines. We set content deadlines at the start of every project and send regular reminders. They get pushed anyway, and once a client accepts that the site will launch late, a cut-off date stops meaning much.
- Content templates. In the past we’ve provided templates for some pages, each following a set format. They often come back half filled in, or with the format ignored, which defeats the purpose. They can certainly help a committed client, but they don’t solve the urgency issue.
- Weekly demo links. When copy hasn’t arrived, we build pages with placeholder text. That does help the marketing team see which sections a page needs and roughly how long each should be. However, in our experience, it doesn’t make the copy arrive any faster.
None of these can create time that isn’t there. The fix that works is a decision made before the project starts, about who will write the copy and where the hours will come from.
Who should write your website content?
In our projects, about 95% of the copy is written by the client. In the other 5%, we either copyedit a client’s draft or write the content ourselves from scratch.
Most clients assume the content is theirs to provide, and many don’t budget for help, expecting to handle it without any trouble. We would always recommend hiring a professional copywriter (we offer website copywriting ourselves, so weigh that advice accordingly). Most clients dismiss it, not yet knowing what the task involves. But we often find ourselves recommending it again mid-project, once the copy has become the obvious bottleneck.
If you do write it in-house, give the job to someone who knows the products, and take something else off their plate to make room. Our article on writing copy for B2B buyers covers what the pages need to say.
Where AI drafts fit
More and more of the copy arriving in our inbox has been written by an AI tool. It’s the shortcut many clients now take, and it does move the project forward. The cost shows up in the one thing the pages are there to do, which is persuade buyers.
- It reads as generic. Most clients haven’t given their AI tool any writing rules or a tone of voice, so the output sounds like every other AI-written page. We can usually spot it immediately, and so can your buyers.
- It’s rarely checked. AI drafts often arrive without anyone checking them for accuracy, and many carry an obvious tell: American spelling.
If you use AI, set it up with your own voice and rules first, and have someone who knows the products check every claim before it reaches the page.
Photos bring their own delays
Most clients want their own photos on the site rather than stock photography, and we understand the instinct. Real photos of your people, your floor, and your work add a realism that stock images can’t. The trouble is usually what arrives.
Snapshots aren’t photography
What we often receive are snapshots rather than professional photographs. They’re real, but they look unprofessional, and that undoes much of the reason for using them.
Years ago, a client of ours had invested $50 million in a new digital printing press. To show off the books it produced, someone photographed them with a point-and-shoot camera, standing up on a couch draped in paper towels as a white backdrop. The printing press was a serious investment, and the photos of its output made it look like anything but.
One opinion can hold up a launch
That same client eventually hired a professional photographer, and the new photos did the work justice. The launch was then held up anyway, because the CEO didn’t like the patterned sweater one of the employees was wearing in the About Us banner image.
Photos are easy to judge and object to, so they invite more opinions than almost any other part of a site. Deciding up front who approves them keeps one objection from stalling everything else.
Stock photos need checking too
Stock imagery has its own caveats as well. We streamline the process by choosing images that suit each page and stay consistent across the site, but clients still need to review and approve them. For many common service-based businesses, that process is fairly quick.
Technical, industrial, and manufacturing sites are usually the exception. The stock photos available for these industries are often limited and not always accurate. On one project for a warehouse racking company, many of the racking photos we had selected showed European-spec racks rather than North American ones. Not being entrenched in the industry, our team didn’t notice the difference when selecting the images. However, anyone who runs a warehouse would spot it immediately, and start to question whether the company was the real thing.
That’s a check only the client can make, which is why image approval belongs on the content schedule alongside the copy.
Finished, not perfect
Pages should be finished before launch, but they don’t need to be perfected. The web isn’t print, where the words are permanent. A stylistic tweak or an extra paragraph is easy to add after launch. What matters is that every page reads as complete, rather than ending abruptly and leaving the reader to wonder where the rest went.
Ready to Launch
- Reads as complete, start to finish
- Answers the question it exists for
- Facts checked by someone who knows
- Clear next step for the reader
Not Ready Yet
- Ends abruptly, mid-thought
- Says “coming soon” anywhere on the page
- Placeholder text still showing
- Claims nobody has verified
Launch in phases
Which pages have to be ready is a decision for each project. Sometimes it’s better to get the site live and gaining traction while one section is still being written.
Case studies are the usual example. If they’ll take 3 to 6 months to write, get reviewed by senior management, and clear the legal department, there’s no reason for them to hold up the whole site. They add a great deal, but they can launch as a second phase while the core product and service pages go live first.
The coming-soon rule
One rule we hold to. If a page requires you to write the words “coming soon”, that means it isn’t ready to launch. Either leave the page out until the content exists, or wait until it does.
What to settle before kickoff
Since deadlines and reminders can’t rescue a content plan that was never workable, the work has to happen before the project starts. These are the decisions we would want made first, ideally written into your website brief.
- Name a writer for every page. A person, not a department. Simply saying “marketing will handle it” is how pages end up with nobody owning them.
- Find the hours. Decide what comes off that person’s plate while they write. If nothing can, that’s a subtle hint that you might want to hire someone to help you with this task.
- Decide on outside help now. A copywriter brought in at the start can work alongside planning, rather than arriving after the schedule has already slipped.
- Give the bios one format. Have one person gather the details from each employee using the same short set of questions. This ensures that the bios are consistent from the get-go rather than needing a rewrite.
- Agree what’s phase two. If case studies or other slow content will follow later, decide that at the start, so it never becomes the reason the whole site waits.
- Plan the photography. If your own photos will be on the site, budget for a professional shoot and book it early. Agree who approves the images, so one opinion can’t hold up the launch.
Once planning is done, the page layouts help too. Writing to a set of known sections and lengths is far easier than starting from a blank page.
Budget the hours, not just the dollars
Content is the part of a website only your company can supply, and it’s the part most often underestimated. Most companies budget the dollars for a redesign carefully. The projects that launch on time are the ones that budget the hours as well.
If you’re planning a redesign and want to talk through how the content would come together, feel free to book a discovery call. It’s a useful conversation about your project, with no pitch, and no pressure.
