Today’s Guest Post is written by Kristie Lorette McCauley is a former certified wedding planner. She’s now The Wedding Planner Copywriter.

You work extremely hard to drive brides, grooms, and couples to your website. You feel like your website truly reveals who you are, what your biz is all about, and helps you book weddings (at least you know it can). When couples land there, they have a different feeling – and it’s costing you business.

Worse, it’s not attracting your dreamiest of dream couples – but instead it’s bringing in the price shoppers, the tire kickers, and the nightmare clients.

Check out the five biggest mistakes that most people make with their website copy (so you can avoid making them like the plague).

#1 You’re Not Grabbing Their Attention

One of the biggest mistakes is a missing headline – a nice attention-grabbing headline. You have about 2.7 seconds (maybe less) to grab them as soon as they land on your site. If your headline is not intriguing them, providing a solution to their problems, or revealing the benefit they receive from working with you, then guess what? They’re moving on down the road.

Don’t believe me?

Think about how you act when pull up your favorite magazine or newspaper online, or crack open a new book. What do you do?

I’ll tell you. You check out the headlines, you check out the table of contents. If you don’t see anything interesting you, move on. If you see something interesting, you flip to that article, story, or chapter, and start to read. (A light bulb should be turning on in your head right about…now).

#2 You’re Making it a Destination

Fact-spewing – that’s what I call it. Your page simply lists a bunch of facts, a bunch of features on the service you’re offering. I’m here to tell you that is boring stuff and nobody gets hyped up about that.

Planning a wedding is a journey. No matter what service you provide that is part of that journey, you have to create a need or desire for your service, rather than just take them straight to the destination. Date them. Woo them. Tell them a story. Take them on a journey, and then, and only then, can you reveal to them how you fit into their journey.

#3 You’re Being Egotistical

The only words that seem to be part of your vocabulary are “we,” us,” “our,” and “I.” Here’s the thing. Couples don’t really give a rat’s patootie about you or your biz. All they really and truly care about is what you and your biz can do for them.

So, you can toot your own horn all day long that you won an award from The Knot (And don’t get me wrong, that’s great, and good for you!), but how does that translate to what you can do for them?

Stop thinking about you and your biz and start thinking about how to word it so that it is blatantly obvious how all that hoopla suits them.

#4 Not Talking Their Talk

You have an ideal client. You have a dream client. This type of client, my friend, is your niche. If you work with destination brides, then you talk to them in a completely different way than if your couples are throwing high-end, high-society weddings at their dad’s country club or the Ritz.

You also are not the right wedding pro for ALL weddings and ALL couples. If you are marketing to everyone, then you’re really marketing to no one at all. (Yes, I said it.)

No, you cannot word your website copy so that you cater to Jewish weddings and every bride marrying in the city of San Diego. Uh, this is two different groups with two different languages. It’s like speaking German to someone who is from Brazil – they aren’t going to understand what the heck you’re saying, they’re not going to resonate and connect with you, and they certainly aren’t going to hire you to do their wedding.

#5 You Don’t Tell Them What to do Next

You grabbed them with your headline. You did everything you were supposed to do to get them to read what you have to say on your site. They’re pretty convinced that they want to work with you. They get to the end of the page, and…nothing. It’s like a cliffhanger for the season finale of your fave show.

Except when it comes to your website, they’re not likely to come back to find out what happens next. So, TELL THEM. Put on your pretty, shiny, little bossy pants and tell them exactly what action you want them to take now.

You’ve done all the hard work by getting them to this point, so don’t drop the ball now. Tell them to call you. Tell them to email you. Tell them to check out this particular product. Send them to your services page. Have them check out your gallery page. Every page should tell them what to do and you can have them do different things on different pages.

Take this handy-dandy checklist to read through each page of your site. Consider it from the point of view of your dream couples as you read through the copy. If you’ve avoided one mistake, move on to checking for the next mistake. Run through the checklist for every page of your site, so you’re not part of the “most” that are making these mistakes. More important, avoid making these mistakes so your words help you to book more weddings and book your calendar.

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Kristie Lorette McCauley is a former certified wedding planner. She’s now The Wedding Planner Copywriter. Want to write copy so swoonworthy wedding couples are standing in line to hire you? Jump on the VIP Waitlist for Kristie’s Write Sweet Spot Copy Bootcamp for Wedding Planners opening in March 2016.