How to Hire a Copywriter For Your Ecommerce Business

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If there was ever a task that most ecommerce professionals don’t think about before launching a store, it’s copywriting.

Small, medium-sized, and large business owners realize that they have to wear multiple hats, from accountant to marketing pro, but copywriter? Sounds a bit tedious, especially if you have dozens of pages on your website paired with hundreds of products.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to find a copywriter that fits your company culture, even if it’s only a freelancer who’s going to be working with you on an “as needed” basis.

Why Do You Need to Find a Good Copywriter for an Ecommerce Store?

When you hire a copywriter online it requires you to look through resumes, portfolios, and whatever else the copywriter offers you.

Vetting your copywriter is extremely important because this writing (on your product pages, homepage, contact page, About Us page, and everywhere else on your website) builds the entire foundation for your SEO.

If the copywriter doesn’t sound natural or she’s trying to cram in too many buzzwords or keywords, Google’s gonna notice and bump your site results down a notch. Or, you’re simply not going to be seen as a credible place to shop.

It’s also essential to appease your human site visitors.

Obviously, you want to grab attention on places like the homepage, but the product descriptions are where the real magic happens.

Now, obviously there are several ways to write product descriptions on a platform such as Shopify or any other, but that’s why it’s so important to find someone who understands your company culture and customer base or hire someone who is willing to learn.

Take, BPI Sports for instance. The copywriter clearly understands what bodybuilders and athletic people care about in their supplements, so she highlighted the most important nutritional facts above the entire product description. Then, the secondary information is nicely organized into bullet points.

how to hire a copywriter

Method Home has a wildly different customer base, so it makes sense that they would hire a copywriter who thinks about artists, creative people, and those who might want to help out non-profits. It’s a simple handsoap, but this focus on the company makes it stand out.

find a copywriter

Choose Good Places to Share Your ‘Copywriter Wanted’ Ads

Here’s a fact:

You don’t always need to hire the best copywriter.

For instance, some product descriptions only need a little editing, or sometimes you’re only trying to get some products onto your website without spending anย arm and a leg.

In this case, one-off freelancing services found on places like Upwork and Freelancer.com are completely fine. Freelancer.com is a cluttered mess of a site, but you’ll find plenty of decent copywriters.

hire copywriters online

As for the more experienced copywriters, this is when you turn to focused, niche job boards. It’s definitely worth completing a Google search to locate some on your own (and you’ll find some local job boards that can be helpful as well,) but we have a few favorites to start with:

Examples of Job Post Templates

There’s no reason to paste a copywritingย job post template into this article since there are tons of them online. Not only that, but yours should be modified to work well with your company needs.

For instance, Workableย and ZipRecruiter,ย all have copywriter job description templates for you to start with. However, I would focus more on looking through job boards to see what other companies have shared as well.

That said, we do have some rules to follow when you’re making your job post:

  • Choose a niche – If a copywriter claims to do everything from blog posts to marketing materials and product descriptions, try looking elsewhere. For instance, if all you need are blog posts, find someone who specializes in that. Hopefully in your own niche.
  • Decide on the skill level – Not all copywriters are as good as others, so sometimes you can save a little cash if you’re only in need of basic product descriptions.
  • Don’t hire SEO pros – These self-proclaimed SEO pros are never going to be better than an experienced writer who knows the basics of how to insert the right keywords into their copy. Most “SEO pros” are terrible writers.
  • Don’t harp on conversion rates – A quality writer isn’t an analytics professional. You’re hiring them to make engaging, fun, or professional content. They might sprinkle in some keywords for you, but the best writers aren’t going to work for you if you expect them to hit conversion numbers. That’s your job, or someone else’s you hire.

How to Hire a Copywriter: Vet Applicants

As you start sharing your job listing on certain boards or freelancer communities, waves of applications are going to start coming in.

It’s fine to glance at CVs and resumes, but that’s not all that important when hiring a copywriter.

People can say anything on a resume, so you’d rather test out the writer like you would if you were hiring a chef for a restaurant.

Round 1

The first round is where you ask the candidates to complete a test. This test doesn’t have questions, but rather some tasks for them to work on.

Only focus on the projects they would be doing if hired. For instance, if the job requires them to write product descriptions, pay them a little cash to work on five to ten descriptions just for your company.

If they’re going to be completing blog posts on a regular basis, ask for one or two full-length posts they think would work well on your blog.

Round 2

After you’ve chosen your favorites, you might need to still cut out a few people. If so,ย send each candidate some edits or things they might be able to do better. You might not be doing this that much during the actual work process, but it can really weed out the bad copywriters since the good ones are willing to hear feedback and make edits.

Follow These Methods to Find a Copywriter Your Needs

The process isn’t all that complicated once you get the hang of it, but the main point to remember is that you’re trying to make your brand sound unique. Forget about SEO and ROI, but rather find a writer who knows the language and grammar, but also makes your company sound unique.

What factors do you take into account when you hire a copywriter? Share with us in the comment section below!

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments section.


Feature Image by Clea Hernandez

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

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