The brief came via the Boshanka design agency hired to redesign the City Removals website from the ground up. City Removals are an industry-leading home, office and European removals company based in London.
A MOVEABLE FEAST
The brief:
Write the new website copy and embellish core service pages
Create new copy highlighting the companies environmental approach
Write guides: A Moving Checklist; Packing Guide; and Moving Home Guide
Then pen the new company brochure, flyers and business cards
All in a web 2.0 stylee: engaging and chatty but also informed and professional
FINDING THE WORDS THAT MOVE PEOPLE
What boxes need to be ticked when picking the right removals company for you?
Certainly, cost plays a part, but moving home is up there with divorce as one of the most stressful events in your life, so the copy needed to reassure their clients that they were quite literally in a safe pair of hands.
Of course, every removals company prides itself on its packing expertise. But it was clear from talking to the CEO that City Removals looked at every job as though it was their own house they were moving. It was personal to them.
I needed to convey this in a short, catchy, memorable way. And it needed to be the heading on the Homepage. This is what I ended up with:
Once I had this heading, I backed it up with examples that everyone can picture in their minds – I brought the world to life:
Lastly, I knew that customers also wanted to know that the company had a great customer reputation and had the stamp of approval by industry bodies such as the British Association of Removers.
Thankfully, City Removals had positive customer reviews in spades – and were a proud BAR member. So I backed up the rest of the Homepage intro by ticking these boxes.
If you want to read the whole page in context, check out the City Removals Homepage.
MOVING GREEN IN 2016
The guides were longer – several thousand words – and required more detailed competitor research. But this time we agreed to be even more creative.
Take the Moving Home Guide. Google ‘moving home guide’ you get thousands of hits – actually, 163,000,000. Every bona fide removals company has one. There are also guides on media sites like the BBC and The Independent.
But they say the same things: when to cancel your post or how to pack boxes. We needed to move moving home guides forward in a new direction. And we had one.
City Removals is a family business. It cares about its environmental impact. As I’d just condensed all this into their new Green Policy, it was a no brainer to create a Moving Home Guide that helped people move home in an environmentally conscious way.
The result was a guide entitled: ‘Moving Green, An Eco-friendly Guide to Moving Home’, which Ben at Boshanka lovingly packaged up to make it both visually engaging and sharable.
Yes, it still tells you when to redirect your post, but it also draws on practical advice on how to move home in a more eco-friendly way – no mean feat when you consider all the boxes and travel involved!
It also ranked organically on the first page of Google:
DO THE RESULTS MOVE YOU?
The new City-Removals website went live early March 2016. The company now get a new client contacting them through the website every day – the old website hadn’t managed to convert anyone previously. On top of the success of the guides, this has set City Removals off on the right track for the future.
ALEXANDER CONSTANTINE, CEO OF CITY REMOVALS:
I used to do all the writing myself. I use to write everything for my brochures, flyers and website. Looking back now after I have worked with Stuart for all the text I needed for my website and for all the stationery I wonder why I did not meet him before. My old text looks so ordinary compared to the masterpiece we now have.
The quality of the text he did compared to mine is extraordinary. He writes fast with flair and the best bit is that he also gives invaluable advice. He does not only write like a robot….he gets involved and the end result is a quality text.
I would recommend Stuart for anyone who needs a writer and I would especially recommend him to small business owners. I know you think you can do it yourself but trust me when I say you cannot. You will only end up with a text that in the long run will lose you customers. His text gives value to anyone’s business and makes you look professional and I am sure that in the long run you will not consider his fees an expense.
Great guy, great service and great text writing abilities.
If you’d like me to get your website moving in the right direction – even into greener pastures – get in touch.