If the content on your website sounds like it could belong to any financial institution, you’re not alone.
Many credit unions fall into the trap of using the same phrases such as “friendly service,” “competitive rates,” and “convenient online banking” without showing what truly makes them different.
And what often happens is potential members see your website and move on without feeling compelled to take the next step.
We believe your website copy should do more than just check boxes. It should tell your story in a way that clearly guides your members to open an account, apply for a loan, or take the next step in their financial journey with you.
In this article, we’ll break down why generic copy often fails to connect with your members and how to write website copy that resonates and drives real results.
If your copy sounds generic, the culprit is probably a lack of brand voice. A brand voice is often determined by your organization’s core values. If your values are transparency and empathy, for instance, your voice would likely be more friendly than formal, and more uplifting than playful.
Your voice then determines how you write your copy: your word choice, sentence structure, and even your use of punctuation.
It’s important that key copy on your website is written in your brand’s voice because it’s what makes you you and not your competitor. Beyond acting as a differentiator, your voice’s consistent presence on the website is what builds affinity and trust with your members.
If you’re wondering where to start, ask stakeholders from different teams to define key words and phrases related to their areas of expertise that embody your core values. It can also be helpful to identify words and phrases you want to avoid.
We’re all used to it by now—Share account, Unsecured Loan, LTV, Overdraft Protection, Not-for-Profit. But are your members and prospective members?
To avoid using jargon, focus on writing clear and simple language your members can understand.
The number one rule in writing for readability is to write for a 7th grade reading level. Another is to not use yourself as a benchmark for readability. To test your own assumptions, you can use tools like Hemingway Editor or readabilityformulas.com to test whether someone without financial expertise can understand what you’re trying to say.
According to the Nielsen Norman Group, web users on average read only 28% of words on a web page. With our tendency to scan for the information we’re looking for, the first few words that pop out at users visually and informationally hold the key to whether or not they will engage with the rest of the page’s content.
You might be tempted to frontload SEO-optimized keywords. And though there is a place for that, it should not be what drives your copy, especially if your goal is to engage and convert members.
Practically speaking, this means fewer “marketing” headlines that make big promises or sound like slogans. It means more user-friendly headlines that point to concrete benefits to the visitor (what’s in it for me?) and the action they need to take to access those benefits.
You have a lot of information you need to communicate to your members. But long blocks of text, especially online, aren't going to do the job. Your visitors are more likely to tune out, scroll past, or leave your website entirely.
One of UX Writing’s primary rules is to write no more than 4 lines of text (if you really need that much), each line containing about 50-75 characters. You can use tools (mentioned above) to help cut down redundant words and unnecessary phrases. When there is a lot to say, use bullet points, numbered lists, columns with headers, and other strategies for "chunking" your copy.
We are living in a world saturated with marketing and promotions. What our users want and need from us is a solution to a problem they have, not a generic promotion with a catchy tagline.
To write copy that resonates with visitors, you have to first understand their true pain points. What are they coming to you for? What are they frustrated with most? How do they want to feel or be talked through this problem?
User research is a powerful way to get to the bottom of your visitors’ needs. If that is not available to you, ask your member service or help teams for insights. What are members concerned about most? Where are you seeing the largest volume of complaints?
Resist the urge to simply list out your product’s features. Instead, lean into how your product offers solutions to their problems.
What’s emerging in the UX community lately is the idea of content-first design, whereby content plays the most active role in shaping the entire page. Traditionally, the approach was to design the product (in this case, websites) first and then add copy at the very end, forcing it to fit into the design.
The content-first design approach essentially treats content as the north star. The words and messages that the users need to navigate are put in place first.
According to the UX Design Institute, this approach improves the user experience because it gives users the information they need to carry out the actions they need.
So if you have the flexibility to rearrange your page, consider collecting the content to include on that page first before considering design elements such as images.
It can be easy to feel like there’s nothing new to say about your credit union or your products. But by tapping into your members’ (or prospective members’) needs, you can write something meaningful each time.
You can speak directly to the reality your members are in, the questions they’re asking, and the goals they’re working toward. That’s how copy moves from generic to genuinely helpful.
When your website copy truly sounds like you and resonates with them, it becomes one of your strongest tools for building trust and growing your credit union.