Why It’s Important to Hire an Editor for Your Online Business

I have written thousands of articles in my career, hundreds of which have been posted on my own sites. For the most part, these articles are posted without edits. I give them a quick proofread, fix the mistakes I spot, and then post them. These articles are there to be read and enjoyed, but they’re not really there to profit, and they are never there to sell a product or a service.

When I launched my first eCommerce project, Shelgo Tea, I did things a little differently. I asked a very talented editor to help me out as I made sure she received every single article, product description, and other piece of basic content. Nothing was posted on that site without being checked by her, and as a result, everything was perfect.

This was an essential step and one that we have also implemented into InkBlimp. Far too many agencies allow content to be posted unedited. They expect writers to produce perfect content, but writers have editors for a reason—it doesn’t matter how good they are, a writer can’t be expected to spot all the mistakes in their own work. At InkBlimp, everything is run by a team of editors who ensure the content is thoroughly checked and corrected before it is posted.

This is an important part of our content creation process, and it’s one I would personally recommend to anyone setting up an eCommerce project. Whether you’re creating the content yourself or paying an individual, unless you’re working with a dedicated agency that will do all the work for you, you need to make sure everything is edited.

Here’s why:

 

Unedited Content Can Cost Sales

I am a firm believer in the power of good content. And I don’t just mean content that is interesting, exciting, descriptive, etc.; I mean content that is absolutely perfect. Maybe I’m pedantic, maybe it’s because I’m a writer, but nothing is more off-putting than an online store that is riddled with mistakes. It reeks of unprofessionalism.

I spend a lot of money online and don’t simply stick with the big, trusted websites like Amazon and eBay. If the site is secure, trustworthy, and has the products I want, I’ll buy from it. It only makes sense, as I ask the same thing of everyone else with my own eCommerce projects. But if that site is riddled with typos, looks like it was created using Google Translate, or is just really poorly written, they’ll lose my business.

I’m not the only one, either. The problem is that many webmasters either don’t understand this or don’t know how to spot poorly edited content. They often put their trust in low-quality freelancers or content agencies, expecting those individuals or agencies to do everything and to make sure everything is perfect. And because the people making these decisions aren’t always native speakers and are very rarely writers themselves, bad content often slips through the net.

As an eCommerce business, you need to give your customers reasons to trust you. An SSL certificate is paramount to this process, as is a contact address, a support number/email, and a refund policy. But making sure your descriptions and other basic content is immaculate is just as important.

Google Hates Poorly Written Content

Google is getting very good at spotting poorly written content. It knows when an article is just regurgitated nonsense that has been written thousands of times over; it knows when something was created using Google Translate; it knows when something is riddled with mistakes and bad writing.

A mistake or two here and there isn’t going to cost you a ranking, but if there are a lot of them, it will. Not only is Google getting better at spotting poorly written content, but it’s also less likely to hook your readers, which means they’ll click off straight away and your bounce rate will increase. The higher your bounce rate, the lower your rankings.

An Editor Can Fix Costly and Embarrassing Mistakes

I once worked with a brand-new company that was preparing for a launch and needed some blog articles to populate their site. Once I delivered the work, they asked me to remain and complete some other tasks, one of which was to add content to their existing product descriptions and improve their SEO value.

I edited, rewrote, and added more content. I put everything in a document and sent it off to be checked. At the same time, I noticed an issue with one of their products. I won’t go into detail for their sake, but it was a line of merchandise that included apparel and gifts. There was a rather sizeable error with the text printed onto all of these items, so I told them about this in passing, not really thinking much of it.

The business was months from launch, so I assumed the product images on the site were graphical representations used as placeholders and that the text would be fixed long before the products went to press. I didn’t even contemplate that it could be an issue and my first thought was that the graphic designer had just made a mistake when creating placeholder images.

I later learned that the pictures were of the actual product and they had spent thousands on stock. The company wasn’t run by native speakers and the products were printed in China, yet it never occurred to them to ask an editor to check things over. They assumed that it wouldn’t matter because the text was short, so they probably just asked someone in-house. The result was a very costly mistake, and just two months later, when the business should have been launching, it disappeared from the internet. I never heard from the client again.

An editor would have checked that text in under a minute. They might have even done it for free if it was added to a larger job. In this case, the company I worked with didn’t make that choice, and it cost them dearly.

These mistakes exist elsewhere as well, from newsletter content to printed promotional materials and even social media posts.

 

InkBlimp Editing Services

As mentioned above, all content created by InkBlimp is edited before being sent to a client. But you don’t have to buy the cow to get the milk. If you just need editing services, then take a look at this page. We have editing, proofreading, critiquing, and rewriting services available, and these are offered on everything from website content to novels and more.