10 Malaysian Website Copywriting Mistakes We Keep Seeing

So similar to our “How to Write a Company Profile” blog, we decided to continue our trend of finding copywriting mistakes we keep seeing on websites.

From our experience, most company website’s content goes through the usual flows:

1. Marketing writes the first version
2. Management/CEO adds certain phrase or tagline
3. Content team prompts AI to help them flesh it out or expand upon

And you probably end up with

“We provide innovative and seamless integrated solutions tailored to empower businesses in an ever-evolving landscape.”

Which is fantastic, so what do you sell?

We write and review a fair amount of website content, and the same problems come up surprisingly often.

Some are branding problems but most are because ChatGPT was given a prompt, generated 800 words and nobody read it afterwards.

So, here are 10 Malaysian website copywriting mistakes we keep seeing.

1. The Company Calls Itself a “Leading Provider”

You have probably seen this opening before: “We are a leading provider of…”

Leading according to whom?

There is nothing technically wrong with saying it, but the phrase has become so common that it barely communicates anything.

The same applies to:

• Trusted
• Premier
• Innovative
• One-stop
• World-class
• Customer-centric

If every competitor says roughly the same thing, none of you are really saying anything.

A manufacturer saying: “We supply and maintain industrial cooling systems for factories across Malaysia.”

is much more useful than: “We are Malaysia’s leading provider of innovative industrial solutions.”

2. Visitors Don’t Know What You Sell

Within the first few seconds, someone should roughly understand:

• What do you sell?
• Who is it for?
• What problem does it solve?
• What should they do next?

Yet we still see homepages with an inspirational headline, three paragraphs about excellence and a stock photo of people shaking hands before the actual service appears. 

If somebody has to visit About Us, Our Expertise and Solutions before discovering you sell commercial kitchen equipment, something has gone wrong.

Make it easy for people to know what you do, who you serve and at what price point. Customers who know what they want may be just comparing product/service and price for 10 seconds before bouncing out.

3. Writing a Company Profile Instead of a Web Page

Malaysian businesses love company profiles which we have a whole blog on as highlighted in the intro.

And yet sometimes that company-profile style can take over the website.

You get: “Established in 1998, ABC Sdn Bhd began its humble journey with a vision to…”

That might have a place in your about us, but definitely not in your homepage or landing page.

Remember, people come to your business because they have a problem, and you claim to have a solution to their problem. So sell it, and sell it LOUDLY.

If someone needs charcoal for their home BBQ, clearly state you are a charcoal manufacturer located in Shah alam that supplies sawdust charcoal and charcoal briquets with same-day shipping in Klang Valley.

Immediately, the customer knows who you serve and what you supply and they can choose to stay or leave if the solution does not match their problem.

A website should help someone make a decision, always remember that.

4. Every Sentence Is About “We”

We believe, we provide, we strive and everything we, but nothing about you, the customer.

Looking, talking about your business is obviously necessary, but customers are usually reading from a much more urgent perspective.

• Can you solve my problem?
• Can you handle my requirements?
• How much does it cost?
• How long will this take?
• Why should I trust you?

Good copy connects what the company does with what the customer gets.

Instead of: “We provide comprehensive payroll management services.”

Try explaining the outcome: “Outsource monthly payroll calculations, statutory submissions and payslip processing to one team.”

Much like a Ted talk, you need to convince the audience of why I should care and how we can help.

5. Your Website Sound Like a Corporate Buzzword Generator

There are certain phrases that seem to reproduce when nobody is watching, mostly because we believe at least, it’s generated by AI.

• “End-to-end solutions.”
• “Holistic approach.”
• “Value-added services.”
• “Seamless integration.”
• “Best-in-class capabilities.”
• “Transformative solutions.”

Any one of these can be perfectly legitimate,  and we’re sure that our own content marketing website is guilty of that as well (we didn’t really check so tell us we’re wrong) 

But the problem is when an entire website consists of them. Imagine you sell a software HRMS  tool and a customer is sitting across you, would you genuinely tell them:

“Our holistic ecosystem empowers your organisation to unlock transformative value”?

Probably not right? You want to say: “Our HRMS helps you manage payroll, leave, attendance and employee records from one system.” Simple and clean.

6. You’re Using AI Without Checking Aren’t You?

We all know people are using AI to speed things up, no need to be so evasive about that. We do it too.

AI is useful for brainstorming and generating variation of the “same same but different” type of content. But please, for the love of Milo, read the thing before publishing it.

Because sooner or later you end up with:

“Our innovative solutions seamlessly integrate cutting-edge technology to empower businesses and unlock sustainable growth.”

There it is, the almighty four.

1. Innovative.
2. Seamlessly.
3. Empower.
4. Sustainable growth.

Truly, the AI greatest hits.

The first output of ChatGPT is rough and we don’t care if you use Claude, N8n, SKILLS or an automation plugin that makes AI crawl your site/entity to understand the context, our point still stands.

Only you (and your team of humans) knows about the company culture, sales objections and competitive advantages. AI is smart, but you know:

• Customer questions
• Sales objections
• Product specifications
• Internal documents
• Malaysian terminology
• Examples from previous projects

Then after you give everything, edit the output.

We have a whole blog on 10 signs Your Content is AI-generated and How to avoid it, which is quite relevant for this section so go check it out before someone says “Yerh, use AI one” in the comments.

7. Are You Still Stuffing SEO Keywords Into Sentences?

We are an SEO copywriting agency, so obviously we would like your website to rank well.

But there are limits to keyword stuffing.

Spamming the same keyword in every H2 is not going to save your site, though it might yield good results in the first few months before finally flat-lining,

Google has become considerably better at understanding topics, related terms and natural language, which is why clustering is important.

If they are many terms or jargon associated with your industry, write a blog about it, explain on a video, heck just make a funny Instagram post about it, that’s SEO too!

8. You Duplicate One Page for your Location Pages

This one appears frequently with service-area or location pages and we get it, it’s time consuming! There’s genuinely nothing you can do to differentiate between Penang and Johor, maybe other than their laksa.

• Plumber in Kuala Lumpur
• Plumber in Johor
• Plumber in Penang
• Plumber in Kelantan
• Plumber in Melaka

Change city name, publish, done.

Except the pages contain almost exactly the same information, maybe change some of the wording a little bit, the location, then gaodim ady.

We firmly believe different pages should exist because they answer different searches, customer needs or buying questions. 

Someone searching for a plumber in Melaka is going to have different needs than one in Penang, however minor those differences be!

9. You’re Hiding the Information Customers Actually Want?

This one is strange because businesses sometimes possess genuinely useful information and then decide not to put it on the website, maybe place it at the footer or the PDF file that nobody clicks on.

Visitors want to know things such as:

• How does pricing work?
• What is the minimum order?
• Which areas do you cover?
• How long does the process take?
• Who is this service suitable for?
• What happens after I enquire?
• What documents do I need?

Instead, they get six paragraphs about your commitment to quality.

We know the pricing page especially is the one that gets hidden the most because scare competitors will undercut and the road leads to “get a custom quote with us today”.

Don’t do that, let it out, if someone needs to call you to ask what you do, how much will your charge and how long will this take, you’re doing something wrong.

10. Every Page End With “Contact Us Today”?

There is nothing wrong with “Contact Us Today”. Hell, we have some of it written on our site too.

But it has become the website equivalent of shrugging and saying, “Well, I suppose you can call us.”

The appropriate next step depends on the page, and yes the wording does matter!

Request a quotation: For someone looking at pricing 

Discuss your requirements: For B2B with complicated technical or mechanical requirements

Book a consultation: For professional services

Ask our team: Someone who just needs clarification

A CTA is still a copy and there shouldn’t be a button that you ctrl c and ctrl v on the website. Give it the same attention as the headline.

Good Website Copy Should Make the Business Easier to Understand

Up until now, we’re pretty harsh on things like AI, repetitiveness and complex jargon. And to make it clear, our content marketing agency is not against them all.

Even something like “innovative solutions”, your company might be genuinely selling something the market has never seen before.

But style over substance is pointless, like a beautifully crafted cup that can’t hold water, there’s no use other than it looks nice.

The goal of website copy is to make the business easier to understand, easier to trust and to buy from.

So if your homepage currently says: “We are a leading provider of seamless and innovative integrated solutions…”

Or anything along those lines, start there folks. One thing we like to say is this: making things simple is actually quite hard.

If a seven-year-old can read your website and roughly understand what you do, then you memang pass the test

“How do you think a two-year-old can figure out an iPad? It’s designed that way on purpose.”  – Keith Wong, Head of content.