You may think it’s just words, but having quality and effective content on your website can either help a customer make a booking or make them go back to the search engine. Website copy should be persuasive, fun, and informative to increase those online bookings!

If you’ve read this article on how to write a tour description that sells, you might be wondering what else you can do to optimize your web copy.

This guide covers a few ways to make your writing more polished, whether you’re working on your activity descriptions, writing a blog, or coming up with copy for a social media post.

Best Practices

Here’s a quick rundown of some best practices and common mistakes we’ve seen on tour and activity websites and some easy fixes to optimize your content today.

Tense

Write your content in present tense so it reads like it’s happening now. It helps readers connect with and put themselves into the experience and makes you sound like the professional you are. Most writers default to future tense as it is something that will happen in the future, but present tense is much more exciting!

Future Tense

Maui Adventures will take you on the adventure of a lifetime! On our three-hour Haleakala bike tour, you will enjoy stunning panoramic views of the sunrise and then you will bike your way back down on this guided excursion. You’ll learn about the history of this National Park, the rare species that call it home, and you will travel along the unique volcanic landscape.

Present Tense

Maui Adventures takes you on the adventure of a lifetime! Enjoy stunning panoramic views of the sunrise before biking your way back down on this guided three-hour bike tour. Learn about the history of this National Park, the rare species that call it home, and travel along the unique volcanic landscape.

Essentially, remove any instance of “will” from the sentence unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Point of View

Write in a second-person point of view to make it more engaging for the reader. Second-person uses “you” and “your” in the content to talk about the activity and the company. It also makes the content more informal and friendly.

Second-Person

At Maui Adventures, we provide you with exceptional helicopter tours and we pride ourselves on our first-rate customer service. We take care of every detail for you to make sure your Maui helicopter tour is exactly how you dreamed it.

Third-person is commonly used in business writing as it tends to be more formal. The company will refer to itself as the company name and will refer to customers in a broad sense.

Third-Person

Maui Adventures provides exceptional helicopter tours to a variety of travelers. Customers will be delighted with the level of customer service that Maui Adventures provides by taking care of every detail of a Maui helicopter tour.

Common Mistakes and Corrections

Plurals & Possession

• Plurals do not need apostrophes (“On this tour we’ll see dolphins and whales. Please read our FAQs if you have any questions.”).
• Possessives require apostrophes (“Stop by the gift shop to get one of Jane’s world-famous cookies. We visit one of Hawaii’s most famous beaches on our tour.”).
• When you have a plural that is showing possession, the apostrophe goes after the last “s” in the word (“Maui Adventure Tours’ snorkel gear is brand new”).
• Weather does not need an apostrophe (“30s, high 50s”).
• Decades (without the century) have an apostrophe in front (“Back in the ’80s, we held our first guided foodie tour of New York City. By the 1990s, we were the number one walking tour in the city.”).

Capitalization

• Proper nouns (company name, brand name, cities and states, people’s names, months, etc.) are capitalized.
• Titles and headlines can be capitalized, but regular nouns and words in the site’s content should not be capitalized.

These are just a few points to remember next time you’re working on a blog post or activity description. Looking for more writing tips? Check out our content marketing guides.