by Sherry Law

Created on: October 07, 2008   Last Updated: February 28, 2012

When starting an online business venture, next to your product nothing is as important to it's success as the quality of your website. And the single most important component of your website is it's copy. Nothing is going to turn a prospective customer away from your website as fast as copy that has been poorly written. Even fabulous graphics or a great product will not impress your customers if your copy is fraught with misspelled words, fragmented sentences or obviously incorrect facts.

Taking a look at the traditional printing process one can see the importance of editing. When a writer works with a print publication a story goes through several people after leaving his or her desk. A newspaper or magazine publisher generally has several people who do nothing but check the facts in the articles being considered for publication. After the facts are checked the article goes to a proofreader before being passed on to an editor's desk. All of these people read through the article before it is printed and most of time errors are caught before publication. A printing house works in a similar fashion; with a manuscript being perused by several pairs of eyes before the ink ever hits the paper.

Publishing on the Internet, however, looks incredibly easy. You sit down at your computer, type in your copy and post it to your site. Most computers now come with programs that check not only for misspelled words but for grammatical errors as well. By using these programs writers can become their own editors. Unfortunately, many people forget to use these programs and fail to proofread their work. This allows silly little errors to slip through and ruin what might have been a great website. Incomplete or run-on sentences, incorrect word usage will cause your website to appear unprofessional. The lack of punctuation or capitalization can cause even the most interesting text to be almost unreadable.

Add to this the fact that in order for your website to be "found" by today's search engines key words or phrases must be inserted into the body of your copy and many writers find it easier to hire someone who specializes in editing. If you do not feel up to the task of editing your own copy, do not feel ashamed to have someone else do it. Proper editing of the text on your website can make the difference between the success and failure of your business venture.

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