Website Copywriting: 9 Formulas That Convert

Website copywriting runs on formulas for an unromantic reason: they work, and they’ve worked for a very long time — AIDA has been selling things since before the lightbulb was common household equipment, 120-plus years and counting. Formulas aren’t a substitute for knowing your customer; they’re the proven order in which to tell that customer what you know. Here are the nine we actually use, grouped by the job each does, with a rewritten example for every one.

Headline formulas: earning the next sentence

1 · The 4-U headline — useful, urgent, unique, ultra-specific; hit at least three. Flat: “Quality Plumbing Services.” Formula: “Burst Pipe? A Licensed Plumber at Your Door Within 90 Minutes.” Specificity is the difference between wallpaper and a reason to keep reading.

2 · Outcome-first — lead with what they get, not what you do. Flat: “We Offer Bookkeeping Solutions.” Formula: “Close Your Books in Two Hours a Month, Not Two Weekends.” Services are means; headlines should sell ends.

3 · The honest question — ask the exact question in the visitor’s head. “Losing Customers to a Slow Website?” works because the reader answers it silently, and a yes buys your next paragraph. (It’s the formula behind our own 5 Signs post.)

Body formulas: keeping the yes going

4 · PAS — problem, agitate, solve. Name the pain, press on what it costs, then present the fix. The agitate step is what amateurs skip and professionals lean on: a problem without stakes is trivia.

5 · BAB — before, after, bridge. Paint life now, life after, and position your service as the bridge between them. The workhorse of service pages, because it sells the destination before the vehicle.

6 · FAB — feature, advantage, benefit. “One codebase (feature) means every fix is built once (advantage), so your maintenance bill halves (benefit).” Never leave a feature un-translated; visitors don’t do conversion math on your behalf.

Persuasion formulas: closing the argument

7 · Specific proof — numbers and names beat adjectives. “Rated 4.9 by 212 clients” outsells “trusted by many happy clients” every time it’s tested, because specificity reads as accountability.

8 · The objection flip — say their doubt before they do: “You’re probably thinking a rebuild means months of downtime — here’s why it won’t.” Naming the objection converts a silent exit into a handled conversation.

9 · One clear CTA — a single next step per page, phrased as the visitor’s gain (“Get my fixed quote”) rather than your process (“Submit”). Two calls-to-action is a coin flip; five is a shrug. One, everywhere, always.

Applying them without sounding like a formula

Formulas structure the argument; your customer’s language fills it. Steal vocabulary from reviews, enquiry emails, and sales calls — the phrases people used when they didn’t know they were being quoted. Then let structure and words meet: PAS for the problem-aware landing page, BAB for service pages, FAB for feature lists, one CTA on everything. And remember copy shares custody of conversion with layout — the clearest sentence loses under a confusing page, which is the UX half of the same job. Rewrite one page at a time, highest-traffic first, and give each version two weeks of data before judging — copy is the rare marketing lever you can test with nothing but a text editor and patience.

If writing it yourself sounds worse than paying for it, that’s literally the service: our copywriting team produces website copy built on these formulas and your customers’ actual words. Show us a page that isn’t pulling its weight via the enquiry form — you’ll get back a marked-up rewrite of one section, free, with a quote for the rest, before the next business day ends.

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