Write with Me: Website Copy — “About Us” for The Terpene Store
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(a.k.a. my very first paid gig 😳)
Before I jump in, let me give you a little background:
I got my first paying gig taking copywriting assignments for a digital marketing agency. If I’m being totally honest, I’m not quite sure how I managed to land it (seeing as I have no actual copywriting experience on my resume), but I guess something on my cover letter made it happen. The pay isn’t great and the work hasn’t been the most consistent. Nonetheless, it’s proving to be a great starting point to get my feet wet and learn the fundamentals while getting some actual hands-on experience (and some cash). I’m working under several Copy Strategists who also serve as the main contact person between the agency and the clients. They send me the assignments. I draft the copy. They review it, suggest edits, I submit the revisions till we’re happy with the final draft, and then they submit the final to the clients. I get paid depending on the quality of my work. Pretty easy concept.
So one of my first assignments was to rewrite the About Us (500-words) and Frequently Asked Questions (800-words) pages for a company that formulates and sells terpenes. I was provided a set of guidelines that I had to go by, as well as a brief background into what the client is looking for as far as voice and tone goes. I think I got lucky that (a) I had an amazing copy strategist who was more than happy to answer all my newbie questions & do a little hand-holding, & (b) this particular assignment didn’t require any key word work or anything so it was a great way to work my way into things slowly.
I thought it’d be a good idea to share exactly how the process went in hopes it might help my fellow rookie copywriters learn something, too.
The copy I was replacing was not very pretty. I can totally see why they wanted some help. I was actually really excited to be able to rewrite it for them. Rewriting their FAQ was easy-peasy — their website provided most of the info. Just needed to rewrite some of it, add some new ones, and organize them into subcategories.
Let’s talk about the About Us.
So here was the prompt for the assignment:
Doing the About Us and the FAQs would be incredible! They’re both pretty straightforward: look at their pages and figure out better copy for them.
For example, in the FAQs, there are a few categories that have identical questions. Eliminating the repeating questions, fleshing out and rewording the existing questions, and adding questions you feel might be asked should be your focus there!
You don’t need to worry about keywords on these pages. Just provide good writing that is concise, informative, and on-brand. You’ll have client-specific copywriting guidelines to refer to if you aren’t sure how or what to write.
Note he references client-specific guidelines, he forgot to include them and I didn’t see them till after I had submitted my first draft. We’ll get to that later.
Here is the client’s original website copy:
You can see that while it’s laid out nicely, it doesn’t read great.
It took me about two days to complete my first draft. Really wanted to take my time and go over it a few times. I based a lot of it off of what they already had and just tried to enhance it and add a little more oomph to it.
This was my first draft as submitted to the copy strategist:
BACK TO OUR ROOTS
When the vaporizer and e-cigarette industries exploded into the mainstream in 2015, we became fascinated with terpenes and the part they play in enhancing flavors and aromatics. Barefoot in our kitchen, we experimented with mixing common, food-grade terpenes and eventually matched our first flavor profile. We coined it Trainwreck, — a sweet, blissful sativa-leaning hybrid that’ll have you riding off the rails after one whiff. Not too long after, we partnered with an analytics lab to continue experimenting and tweaking our magic sauce. After months of trial and error, we believed we’d finally gotten our recipe right. We quietly slipped our new formulation into a vape competition at a holiday party and it was a hit! Word spread fast and we knew we were onto something!
SETTING UP SHOP
We went legit and began scaling our formulas and bottling them to sell locally. Before we knew it, we couldn’t keep up with all of our orders. The people wanted terps! So after a few short months of opening our doors, we had the opportunity to upgrade our digs and create more jobs. We migrated to a bigger facility and hired more help so we could meet our meet the demands of our distinct audience. Unlike other terpene manufacturers, we’ve set rigorous clean standards for ourselves early-on. Although it is not an industry-requirement, we hold ourselves accountable through testing every product for heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials, pesticides, and other any foreign particles ensuring the safety of our customers. We even built two cutting-edge ISO-7 Cleanrooms that guarantee clean, pure formulations free of any contaminants or fillers every single time.
HIGH STANDARDS
After settling into our new, state-of-the-art headquarters, we placed our focus on expanding our diverse selection. Over time, we have meticulously crafted more formulations and have been able to expand our flavors to offer over 180 unique profiles with plans for more to be added soon. Today, we offer one of the most extensive libraries in the industry featuring an endless variety of flavors, strains, and profiles. All our ingredients are naturally-sourced, high-grade, and FDA-approved for food and flavor use. Each of our blends is guaranteed to have passed our stringent lab-testing thresholds with flying colors. We’ll even send you our safety data sheets upon your request! We believe our unwavering commitment to excellence and focus on staying true to our roots has granted us the opportunity to partner with some of the most amazing pioneers in the industry and contribute to the market’s epic growth. Committing to our mission of meeting and surpassing the high standards we have set for ourselves is what we believe sets us apart.
THE TERPENE STORE DIFFERENCE
Rooted in our fundamentals, we remain committed to disrupting the industry through consistently crafting the biggest, growing selection of lab-tested, highly-concentrated, naturally-sourced terpene flavor profiles without ever compromising quality, purity, or our values. Continually striving for the next level of excellence is a promise we uphold to ourselves and each of you. That is our 100% guarantee. and the Terpene Store Difference.
I was hella proud of it. I knew the strategist would have some feedback, but I thought I knocked it out of the park. Minimal edits necessary. 😆
Here was my strategist’s first round of critiques:
1) While I can see you were going for a casual voice in the About Us, I noticed some of the vocabulary crossed over into, for lack of a better word, “stoner-esque.” As The Terpene Store emphasizes how dedicated they are to the science of developing terpene, they do want to retain a level of professionalism. Things like “we went legit” and “upgrade our digs” aren’t really the kind of language they’re going for.
2) You have a lot of run-on sentences. For web copy, keeping it shorter is almost always better. If a sentence goes past 15 words, it is too long. An example: “Rooted in our fundamentals, we remain committed to disrupting the industry through consistently crafting the biggest, growing selection of lab-tested, highly-concentrated, naturally-sourced terpene flavor profiles without ever compromising quality, purity, or our values.” Cut back on some of the adjectives and break sentences like this into two to improve readability.
I had kind of suspected that my tone might come across a little “stoner bro” so I was anticipating some reframing. I’ll also admit that I went ham on the adjectives because I was trying to hit my minimum word count. I know too much fluff isn’t good, but I was all out of ideas. (rookie mistake, apparently)
I took his feedback into consideration and this is what I submitted next:
BACK TO OUR ROOTS
When the vaporizer and e-cigarette industries exploded into the mainstream in 2015, we became fascinated with terpenes and the role they play in enhancing flavors and aromatics. Barefoot in our kitchen, we experimented with mixing common, food-grade terpenes and eventually matched our very first flavor profile. We coined it Trainwreck — a sweet, blissful sativa-leaning hybrid. Not too long after, we partnered with an analytics lab to continue experimenting, testing, and tweaking our magic sauce. After months of trial and error, we believed we’d finally gotten our recipe right. We quietly slipped our new formulation into a vape competition at a holiday party and it was a hit! Word spread fast and we knew we were onto something!
SETTING UP SHOP
We quickly got to work scaling our formulas and bottling them to sell locally. Before we knew it, we couldn’t keep up with all of our orders. The people wanted terps! So after a few short months of opening our doors, we had the opportunity to upgrade our space and create more jobs in our local SoCal community. We migrated to a bigger facility and hired more help so we could meet the demands of our distinct audience. Unlike other terpene manufacturers, we’ve set rigorous clean standards for ourselves early-on. Although it is not an industry-requirement, we hold ourselves accountable through testing every product for heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials, pesticides, and any foreign particles. Ensuring the safety of our customers has always been one of our top priorities. We even built two cutting-edge ISO-7 Cleanrooms that guarantee clean, pure formulations free of any contaminants or fillers every single time.
HIGH STANDARDS
After settling into our new, state-of-the-art headquarters, we placed our focus on expanding our diverse selection. Over time, we have meticulously crafted more formulations and have been able to expand our flavors to offer over 180 unique profiles with plans for more to be added soon. Today, we offer one of the most extensive libraries in the industry featuring an endless variety of flavors, strains, and profiles. All our ingredients are naturally-sourced, high-grade, and FDA-approved for food and flavor use. Each of our blends is guaranteed to have passed our stringent lab-testing thresholds with flying colors. (You can check it out for yourself right here). We believe our unwavering commitment to excellence and focus on staying true to our roots has granted us the opportunity to partner with amazing pioneers in the industry and contribute to this market’s epic growth. Committing to our mission of meeting and surpassing the high standards we’ve set for ourselves is what we believe sets us apart.
THE TERPENE STORE DIFFERENCE
Rooted in our fundamentals, we’re committed to disrupting the industry through consistently crafting the widest selection of terpene formulations without ever compromising quality, purity, or our values. Continually striving for the next level of excellence is a promise we work diligently in upholding to ourselves and each of you. That is our 100% guarantee and the Terpene Store Difference.
Off it went.
Here was the feedback for the second draft:
1) At the top of the Google Doc, you’ll see two lines: Title Tag and Meta Description. Those are for you to write, even on pages without keywords. You can refer to our general SEO copywriting guidelines to learn how to write those! For your two pages (FAQs and Our Story) you can disregard requirements related to keywords, but I would like you to write the metadata for them (title tag and meta description).
2) I notice you retain a lot of client copy from the live site. That’s not inherently a problem — some clients request that we do — but, generally, we want to produce new copy. Our clients are hiring us to write their copy because they typically aren’t great writers themselves, which is the case here. So, unless otherwise requested, feel free to completely rewrite pages, so long as the content itself remains the same!
Don’t do a complete rewrite this time, since we don’t have time, but just something to keep in mind with copy going forward!
3) This part is on me: the link to the client-specific guidelines in the doc went to the wrong client! You were writing blind without knowing enough about the client or the tone they wanted. I am so sorry I put you through that! I’ve included the guidelines in the doc now (in the “Notes” section beneath the link to the general copywriting guidelines).
I think you got the voice they wanted pretty good without the guide for reference but in the future, make sure you read the client’s guidelines before jumping into the copy so you know how to write for them.
Firstly, he advises how I retained a lot of the client’s original copy, which he says isn’t always terrible, but he makes a valid point — clients are hiring us to produce new copy, not use their old shit. You’ll note in the final draft how he edited it so that it sounds almost entirely new, but still retains a lot of my new copy as well as captures the client’s story in much more enjoyable way.
Secondly, he mentions that I missed writing the meta data. My asshole clenched when I read this — wtf is a title tag and meta descriptions?
After some googling and referring to the agency’s guidelines, I gathered that it’s the headline & little description that appears on search results when you search for that page:
After taking a shot in the dark, this is what I submitted as my “meta data” (sounds so techy):
Title Tag: The Terpene Store | About Us | The Terpene Store Difference
Meta Description: From humble beginnings to the widest selection in terpene formulation s with 200+ flavors and same-day shipping.
lol not horrible considering I had no real idea wtf “metadata” actually is, but anyway, here was his feedback:
I think you get the general idea, but I’d like you to read the requirements for title tags and meta descriptions in our General SEO Copywriter Guidelines (as well as the client’s copywriting guidelines). Your meta descriptions are too short and your FAQ title tag is too long right now. I let you know you could ignore the requirements related to keywords (like needing to include the primary keyword in the title tag), but all the other ones still apply!
Here was his rewrite of the metadata:
Title Tag: Our Story | The Terpene Store Difference | The Terpene Store
Meta Description: We went from experimenting in kitchens to developing over 200 flavors of terpenes in labs. Here’s how we became the Flavor House of the Cannabis Industry.
& here is his revised version (& final draft) of the copy for the About Us:
BACK TO OUR ROOTS
When the vaporizer and e-cigarette industries exploded in 2015, we became fascinated with terpenes and the role they play in flavors and aromatics. After carefully experimenting with common, food-grade terpenes, we eventually matched our very first flavor profile: Trainwreck, a sweet and blissful sativa-leaning hybrid.
For the next few months, we partnered with an analytics lab to continue experimenting, testing, and tweaking our recipe. After months of trial and error, we felt confident enough to slip our new formulation into a vape competition at a holiday party. It was a hit!
SETTING UP SHOP
Word spread fast about our formula. People wanted to try our terps, so we started bottling and selling locally. Before we knew it, we couldn’t keep up with all of our orders! After only a few months of sales, we started hiring employees to help us handle development, sales, and shipping. We also migrated to a bigger facility.
Unlike other terpene manufacturers, we set rigorous clean standards for ourselves early-on. We made sure our new facility had two cutting-edge ISO 7, Class 10,000 cleanrooms. Although it isn’t an industry requirement, we rigorously test every product for heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials, and any foreign particles. The safety and experience of our customers has always been our top priority.
HIGH STANDARDS
After settling into our new state-of-the-art headquarters, we focused on discovering new terpene flavors. Since our founding, we have meticulously expanded our flavors from five to over 200 unique profiles. Today, we offer one of the most extensive libraries in the industry featuring an endless variety of flavors, strains, and profiles.
All of our high-grade terpenes are non-cannabinoid botanically-sourced and FDA-approved for food and flavor use. Each of our blends is guaranteed to have passed our stringent lab-testing thresholds with flying colors. You can check out our test results yourself right here!
THE TERPENE STORE DIFFERENCE
Rooted in our fundamentals, we’re committed to disrupting the industry through constant creation of terpene formulations without compromising quality, purity, or our values. We continually strive for the next level of excellence for the experience of our customers and fellow industry pioneers. That is our 100% guarantee and the Terpene Store Difference.
As you can see, he managed to cut a lot of the fat, sort-of-speak, but still kept most of what I wrote. I think he made it sound 10 x’s better and I can’t wait to see it live on the client’s site! 😌 I certainly learned a lot from just this one assignment. I hope it helps you, too.
On to the next one!
Happy writing, folks!
Nat
{{09/30/21 Update: it’s live!!!!}}
