You can explain over and over what makes good copywriting. Clear language, understanding of your audience, yadda yadda yadda. But sometimes, reading great copywriting examples is what finally makes it all come together.
We like following our favorite brands on social media and saving or bookmarking examples of their writing. It’s a great way to get inspired and hone our own writing skills. That’s what we’re sharing below: five of our favorite copywriting examples, what makes them so awesome, and what you can learn from them yourself.
Slack’s understanding solutions page
Go to Slack’s solutions page, and a fantastic looping video describes the company as a place where work happens, but “work” is replaced by phrases like “helping clients, “making hires,” and “closing deals.” A line of copy underneath reminds site visitors that “Whatever work you do, you can use Slack for your business.”
Slack is used by corporations of all sizes and all sorts of businesses. They make that super clear at the top of their solutions page with barely any copy at all. Scroll down, and you’ll see solutions segmented by a company’s department: sales, customer service, marketing, etc.
Scroll a little further and you’ll find more solutions organized by industry, such as education and media. In this section, Slack also makes sure to point out that they can handle companies that have strict compliance requirements. Pretty smart, right?
We love Slack’s page for its understanding of their audience, as well as action-oriented copywriting like “keep your customers happy” or “release better code faster.” Our favorite line? “Engage students and connect your entire campus with a collaborative approach to distance learning.” That touches on who Slack is for, what it can do, and how it can help users now.
Wanderlust Creamery’s mouthwatering menu page
We apologize in advance, but we’re about to make you crave ice cream reeeally badly.
Wanderlust Creamery, an artisanal ice cream brand inspired by travel, is the culprit. Besides their tagline — “A Destination in Every Scoop” — their menu page is a fantastic example of well-crafted copy and good design.
When you land on the page, you can either navigate to their signature flavors available year-round, or their seasonal flavors. They also throw a link to their online pint shop in case you’re not local and want to buy their products, which is a smart move. They also share their allergens and ingredient use up top so people don’t have to scrounge for that information.
Okay, now onto the ice cream. Flavors are organized into accordions that expand and fold, saving space and making the page easy on the eyes. Just click on each flavor to learn about its country of origin, inspiration, taste, and ingredients.
We’re not sure if you can really mess up an ice cream menu page that badly, but we do know that Wanderlust gets it right with streamlined design and relevant information. Oh, and delicious product photos. Excuse us while we drool.
The Sill’s smart blog
The Sill is a women-owned brand we gave a shout out to in this blog. One of the reasons we love the houseplant shop and subscription service, aside from being women-owned, is that they have excellent design and site navigation. But we also love The Sill’s blog.
First off, they call it “Your Journey to Plant Parenthood.” HA. And they describe their posts as covering “a variety of plant care topics to inspire confidence in the next generation of plant parents.” They set expectations for their blog up front, and then they deliver.
How do they deliver? Browse the blog and you’ll notice that each blog title is straightforward, answering a question that someone may have about plant care. For example:
- The Best Pet-Safe Plants to Gift this Spring
- Easy Indoor Plants That Can Survive Low Light
- How to Care for a Peperomia Obtusifolia or Baby Rubber Plant
- The Benefits of Houseplants
The Sill’s blog posts show that they know what kind of content their audience wants. Advice for choosing plants, reasons why they should have plants, tips for caring for a certain kind of plant, and so on. They also cleverly tie blog posts into their products; The Sill has a pet-friendly subscription as well as a monthly gift subscription.
GIPHY’s user-focused About page
A well-written About page focuses on what you can do for your site visitor. Not your hobbies or go-to coffee order. What problem do you solve? What results are you promising? What makes you so special, or the best choice over your competitor? Basically, why should someone pick you?
That’s why GIPHY’s About page is so great, aside from all the GIFs, of course. They don’t launch into an overly long story about how the company was founded or what every single person on their team does. GIPHY does talk about that stuff further down the page. But the part up top covers what they offer their customers.
Check out what they say (and mean) on their page:
- “GIPHY is also everywhere your conversations are happening. From iMessage, to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok…and everywhere in between.” See how popular GIPHY is? You should be using them, because everyone else already is.
- “We are the platform where you can find the content you are passionate about — whether it be reaction GIFs for your convos…” GIPHY clearly knows their target audience.
- “…GIPHY is home to the content making your conversations and stories more positive, more fun, and more you.” This sums up what they do and why!
Like we said in this blog when it comes to talking about yourself on your website, it’s really not about you. You can totally talk about your company culture and your team and dog-friendly office, but that’s not the most important stuff, so leave it for later.
Poo-Pourri’s funny FAQ page
Look, everybody poops. Let’s all embrace our inner child and remember that so we can look at Poo-Pourri’s fantastic FAQ page seriously. (But we’re definitely chuckling to ourselves over here while reading it.)
FAQs, or frequently asked questions, are important because you can overcome any objections they may have in buying your offers. You’re saving some time wondering what ingredients are in your baked goods, how fast their shirt will ship, or whether you’ll refund them if they don’t like your digital download.
And Poo-Pourri? If you’ve never heard of their brand, they sell natural odor eliminators for the bathroom, your body, and other products. Their FAQ is a prime example of a brand that knows their shit (#sorrynotsorry) and also anticipates their customers’ questions.
Take this Q-and-A about using their bathroom odor eliminator:
Q: How the flush do you use Poo-Pourri? Do you spray it in the air? Directly on your bum?
A: Spritz the bowl, not the hole.
- Give the bottle a little shake
- Spritz 3-5 sprays of Poo-Pourri into the toilet bowl onto the water’s surface
- Take a seat and let that sh*t go
- Tell us how using Poo-Pourri made you feel! Tag @poopourri on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
Let’s all give Poo-Pourri a round of applause, because in a single piece of content, they managed to answer the question clearly and succinctly, use cheeky (#sorrynotsorry) humor, stay on-brand, and share links to their social media pages. Freakin’ brilliant.
Get inspired by your favorite copywriting examples
What did we learn from these five examples?
- Understanding your audience is key.
- Good design matters just as much as good writing.
- Create content you know your audience wants to read.
- Talk about your customers on your About page, not you.
- Your FAQ page is a great place to encourage people to buy…and use humor if it’s on-brand.
There are so many other brands out there killin’ the copywriting game that you can learn lots from. Browse social media and save any pieces of writing you come across that make you laugh, make you think, or make you check out their website.
Yes, we’re also giving you permission to save examples of writing that made you cringe, roll your eyes, or hate the brand. It’s just another way to sharpen your writing skills!
