Compelling Course Copy

You’ve got brilliant degrees. But your course pages aren’t doing them justice. Let’s get that sorted

Be honest. Are the course pages on your website doing a good enough job to sell your degree programmes and pull the right students in?

Or is wordy or cobbled-together content detracting from the quality of your offer (and possibly even putting good candidates off)?

With face-to-face open days not always an option, the course copy on your website needs to be pulling even more weight to sell your teaching and student experience.

You want people to visit your pages, and quickly get a feel for what they’re going to get from your course (and why they should study it with your uni in particular).

But more than that, you want them to feel inspired and engaged, and wanting to find out more.

Need some help with that? Our Compelling Course Copy service is for you

We’ve distilled what we’ve learnt from writing hundreds of course pages for leading unis into a proven, step-by-step process.

You choose how many course descriptions you want us to work on, and we’ll walk you through exactly what’s needed to improve them.

A Compelling Course Copy package is ideal if:

  • You’re not happy with the quality of your course pages, and know they could be working harder to sell what you do and attract more (of the right) students.

  • You’d value some input from a specialist HE copywriter on what constitutes a great course page and how to go about developing it.

  • You want an easy-to-follow process you and your teams can implement, to improve the way you promote existing and future courses.

We have been working with Jo for around six years on creating course copy. She has a great understanding of our products, our tone of voice and the wider University. Jo is excellent at managing relationships with our clients, often multiple stakeholders at one time, making the process seamless. She has a great way with words – and the copy is always well received by us and our stakeholders.

Caroline Patton, UWE Bristol

Here’s how it works

Step 1. Getting started

We’ll start by taking a brief from you, to discuss your course pages, where they’re falling short and what you want to achieve. What are your key points of difference? Is there a defined tone of voice? How much flexibility do we have in your templates? We’ll get clear on all that upfront.

Step 2. Interview course leader(s)

Hands down the best way to write compelling course copy is to talk to the course leaders first hand. So we’ll set up interviews with them (with your help). And develop a questionnaire the academic can fill in, to guide our call and gather all the information we need.

Step 3. Write course copy

We’ll then write up your new course copy to your agreed template and word counts. We’ll be thinking about messages and tone, and structuring it all in a way that engages your readers and inspires them to take action.

Step 4. Amends

We’ll deal with any amends from the course contact and your team, and get the copy to where it needs it to be: signed off and ready to be uploaded onto your site.

With a Compelling Course Copy package, you’ll receive:

  • A briefing call or Zoom to talk everything through upfront
  • An audit of your current course entries – to see what’s working and where you could make improvements
  • A questionnaire you can use to gather the juiciest information for your course entries
  • Rewritten course copy to show our Compelling Course Copy in action
  • Two rounds of amends

How much?

We quote on a project basis, so how much each course page costs will depend on a number of factors, including: the amount of text involved, how many flexibility we have in your template, and when you need it for. However, here are a few example costs to give you an idea of what we charge:

Create new course page from scratch

Includes:

  • Briefing Zoom or Teams
  • Questionnaire and interview with programme lead
  • Revised copy for one course
  • Up to two rounds of amends

From £850 per course

Edit existing course page copy for tone and readability

Includes:

  • Briefing Zoom or Teams
  • Edited copy for one course
  • Up to two rounds of amends

From £250 per course

Get started on a Compelling Course Copy project:

Email us your copy

Prefer to talk things through first?

Book a free Copy Chat