February 23, 2026
Your audience can spot AI-written content. They just can't explain how.How AI-written content loses readers before it makes its point, and why human writing is becoming a competitive advantage
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At some point, every business owner looks at their website and has the same thought: this needs a rewrite.
Usually it's prompted by something specific. A prospect who said they almost didn't reach out because the site seemed outdated. A sales call where you had to explain things the website should have already covered. Or just a slow creep of embarrassment every time you share your URL.
The instinct to fix it is right. The question everyone immediately asks is: how much is this going to cost?
The straightforward answer is: more than you think. But also less than you're probably losing by leaving it as-is.
This article breaks down what a full website rewrite actually costs in Australia — copy, strategy, design, development, and the bits people tend to overlook — and makes the case, with data, for why weak copy is doing more damage than most businesses realise.
There's no single number here, which is frustrating but true. Website copywriting costs vary depending on who you hire, how many pages you need, how complex your messaging is, and how much strategic thinking is included versus just words on a page.
Here's a realistic breakdown of what you're looking at.
In Australia, professional website copywriting typically costs between $500 and $2,000 per page, depending on the complexity of the page, the depth of research required, and the experience level of the copywriter. A homepage with a layered value proposition costs more than a Contact page. An industry-specific landing page in a regulated sector like finance or insurance costs more again.
To give that some context, here's an actual recent quote for a copywriting project I worked on recently (copy only):
These are per-page copywriting rates. They cover research, drafting, and revisions on the copy itself. They don't include the audit, sitemap planning, positioning strategy, or SEO architecture that should happen before a single word gets written.
Market rates for the copywriting component alone on a five-page website break down roughly by experience level:
Those are the words-only numbers. A complete website project at the senior end — one that includes an audit of what's currently on the site, a sitemap and site structure review, a messaging framework built around your buyers, full copywriting across five pages, and on-page SEO — starts at around $5,500. The jump in price from "just copy" to "copy plus the strategy underneath it" reflects how much work happens before writing starts.
For larger sites, a ten-page project that includes buyer journey mapping, offer hierarchy, and full copywriting sits around $10,000. A fifteen-plus-page authority site with messaging framework development and conversion flow strategy starts at $16,000. You can see a full breakdown of what's included in each package here.
You can also have the strategy and structure work done separately, then bring in a copywriter purely for execution. Some businesses prefer that order of operations as it can reduce the copywriting fee, though it requires having the strategic foundation already in place.
Research time, strategic thinking, and SEO knowledge. The cheaper end of the market delivers words. The upper end delivers messaging built around how your buyers actually make decisions, which is a materially different service.
A homepage written without discovery is essentially a guess about what your visitors care about. It might be a well-written guess. But it's still a guess. Good website copy starts with understanding what motivates your buyers, what alternatives they're considering, and what specifically makes you the better choice for them.
A senior copywriter working on your website isn't just writing. The work before the first draft includes:
At AX Content, website copy projects begin with a website audit. The audit identifies where current copy is losing readers, what structural or messaging issues exist, and what needs to be resolved before any new writing begins. It's the step most businesses skip — and the reason many rewrites address the symptoms rather than the actual problem. Get your website audit.
Copy doesn't exist in isolation. Once you've invested in messaging that works, someone needs to design a site that presents it clearly and build a platform that runs reliably.
For a professional custom website redesign in Australia:
A typical small business site (strategy, custom design, development, and content writing) generally falls between $8,000 and $25,000. More complex builds or eCommerce work can reach $40,000–$50,000+.
The design and development costs aren't the focus of what I'm talking about here, but they're important context. For a $15,000 website project, a $7,500 allocation to copy is proportionate. Copy that doesn't convert makes every dollar spent on design and development less valuable.
One cost that regularly falls through the cracks in a website rewrite is the strategic thinking that should come before any of it: clarifying your positioning, understanding what makes you different, deciding who you're talking to and in what order. Sometimes this is embedded in a senior copywriter's project fee. Sometimes it's a separate engagement.
Either way, it's real work. And skipping it is usually why rewrites need to be redone two years later.
A website isn't a one-time expense. Hosting and maintenance for custom-built sites can run a few thousand dollars annually. Content updates, keeping facts accurate (particularly important in finance and regulated industries), and refreshing case studies and proof points all add up over time.
A website that was accurate in 2022 is often actively misleading by 2025. Out-of-date data creates a trust deficit that runs through your entire digital presence, not just the page where the outdated information sits. The same applies to your blog: old articles with stale statistics or outdated advice can undermine the credibility of everything else on your site. A blog audit is a good way to find out what's working, what's past its use-by date, and where you're leaving traffic on the table.
This is the part most website cost guides don't cover, because it's harder to quantify. But it's also the most important part of the conversation.
Every day your website copy underperforms, it costs you something. Lost leads. Lost trust. Marketing spend that doesn't convert. Prospects who checked the site and walked away without making contact.
The research on this is fairly direct.
Visitors form an impression of your website within seconds. If they can't quickly understand who you are, what you do, and why it matters to them, they leave. Research consistently shows that visitors spend less than 20 seconds on a page on average. That's the window your homepage copy has to do its job.
Most homepages squander it. Vague language, company-focused copy that leads with history rather than value, buried or absent value propositions. These don't just make a bad impression. They directly suppress the number of people who take the next step. High bounce rates on landing pages are specifically linked to unclear messaging, not design problems.
75% of consumers judge a company's credibility based on its website. And 65% of people say web content is generally unreliable or hit-and-miss. That second figure matters for how you read the first: credibility online isn't assumed. It's earned. Sloppy, jargon-heavy, or outdated copy pushes you into the unreliable majority before a reader has considered whether your product is right for them.
For B2B businesses, where buyers are doing extensive research before they ever make contact, this plays out in a very specific way. The website is the thing being evaluated before any human conversation happens. If the copy doesn't hold up under that scrutiny, you often never find out, because those prospects simply don't reach out. This is part of why expert-led content has become such a significant differentiator in B2B: generic copy signals a generic business.
The data on what better copy does to conversion rates is significant. One documented example found that changing the wording of a homepage call-to-action alone increased conversions by over 111% — no design changes, no additional traffic.
Separate research into messaging consistency found that companies with clear, consistent messaging increase revenue by up to 33% compared to those with unclear messaging, and that 68% of businesses say consistent messaging has contributed to revenue growth of 10% or more.
There's also a reading-level dimension worth noting. Copy written at an accessible reading level (roughly what a 10–13-year-old could follow) converts at around 11%, compared to roughly half that for more complex or dense writing. Simpler, clearer copy isn't dumbing things down. It's removing friction.
Let's put some numbers on it. Say your site gets 10,000 visitors a month and converts at 3% — below the Australian average of around 6.37% for B2B websites. At a $4,500 average customer value and a 12% lead-to-sale rate, that's roughly $162,000 a month in revenue.
If a copy and positioning overhaul moves your conversion rate up by 33% (a figure backed by multiple case studies) you're at roughly $216,000 a month. That's $54,000 extra per month, or $648,000 per year. A 68% lift, also documented in real B2B projects, takes the uplift to over a million dollars annually.
Even moving from 3% to the average 6.37% (no heroics, just average performance) more than doubles the number of leads your existing traffic produces.
Set that against a $10,000–$15,000 professional copy project, and the ROI conversation changes.
When you're budgeting a website project, it helps to think in five distinct buckets.
Strategy and messaging. Customer research, positioning, value proposition, sitemaps, and audience journeys. This is the foundation. Without it, everything built on top is likely to need rebuilding. Budget $2,000–$8,000 depending on complexity.
Copywriting and on-page SEO. The words that do the work. Pages, headlines, meta copy, and microcopy. In Australia, $500–$1,500 per page is realistic for professional work. For a full site with strategy included, $5,500–$16,000 covers most SME projects.
Design and development. The visual experience and the technical infrastructure. $5,000–$25,000 for most SME sites. More for custom or complex builds.
Platform, hosting, and maintenance. Ongoing costs that accumulate over time. A few hundred to a few thousand dollars per year depending on what you're running.
The revenue you're losing right now. Lost conversions, inflated ad spend, and prospects who looked and left. This one is harder to line-item, but the data above gives you a way to estimate it.
If you're at the stage of hiring someone to rewrite your site, a few things are worth your attention.
Ask whether they do discovery before they write. Any copywriter who sends you a draft without first understanding your business, your buyers, and your competitive context is guessing. Good website copy starts with research.
Ask about their process for SEO. Website copy that isn't structured for search is a missed opportunity. The work of understanding what your audience is searching for, and how to answer those questions better than your competitors, should be part of the project from the beginning.
Ask to see examples from a comparable industry. Copy for a SaaS business looks different to copy for a financial services firm. The constraints are different, the required level of trust-building is different, and the compliance considerations can be significant. Experience in your space matters.
Ask about auditing before rewriting. A copywriter who starts writing before they understand what's broken with the current site is solving the wrong problem. A website audit before a rewrite is how you avoid spending money fixing the symptoms while the actual issue stays in place. If you're curious what an audit typically surfaces, here are 11 common content issues and how they get fixed.
It's worth addressing this directly, because a lot of businesses have been asking me whether AI can handle the rewrite at a fraction of the cost.
AI tools can produce drafts. What they can't produce is the insight, experience, and perspective that makes copy persuasive. Your website is making a case for your business. That case needs to be built on a real understanding of what your buyers care about, what alternatives they're considering, and what specifically makes you better for them.
AI-written copy tends to be generic precisely where specificity matters most. It describes a category of businesses rather than this business. And increasingly, readers respond to it accordingly, not by flagging it as AI, but by not feeling particularly compelled by it. There are specific patterns in AI-written content that lose readers before the copy makes its point, and most of them are invisible to the person who wrote it.
For B2B companies, financial services businesses, and anyone where trust is a precondition for conversion, this is a meaningful risk.
For a small-to-medium business website rewrite in Australia, here's a realistic summary:
If those numbers feel steep, consider what you're currently spending on marketing to drive traffic to a site that isn't converting it. The website is where marketing spend either pays off or disappears.
A website rewrite that moves your conversion rate from 3% to the Australian average of 6.37% doesn't just pay for itself. It permanently doubles the value of every dollar you spend on driving traffic.
If you're not sure your site needs a full rewrite, a website audit is the sensible first step. It identifies where your current copy is losing readers, what messaging gaps exist, and what changes would have the most impact, before you commit to a full project.
If you want to talk through your situation before committing to anything, you can also book a 1:1 strategy session — 90 minutes to get clear on what your site actually needs and where to start.
If you already know the site needs work and want to talk through what that looks like for your business, book a discovery call.
AX Content is a Melbourne-based content consultancy specialising in B2B, finance, fintech, and SaaS. We write website copy, run content audits, and provide fractional content leadership for businesses that want content that drives results.
Professional website copywriting in Australia typically costs $500–$1,500 per page, depending on the complexity of the page and the experience level of the copywriter. A homepage sits at the higher end while simpler pages like Contact or About come in lower. For a small, complete project that includes strategy, sitemap planning, messaging, and copywriting for five pages, expect to invest from around $5,500. Larger sites with multiple service layers or complex positioning run $10,000–$16,000.
At the professional end, a website copywriting project includes more than just writing. Before a word gets drafted, the work typically covers a review of your current site, competitor and keyword research, a messaging framework built around your buyers, a site structure (or sitemap) that gives each page a clear purpose, and on-page SEO including title tags, meta descriptions, and headings. The copy itself is then written and revised from that foundation. Cheaper copywriting services often skip the strategy work, which is usually why the copy doesn't perform.
The data suggests yes, fairly strongly. Documented B2B case studies show conversion lifts of 33–68% following a copy and messaging overhaul, and research into messaging clarity found that companies with consistent, clear messaging increase revenue by up to 33% compared to those without it. When you consider that moving from a below-average conversion rate to the Australian average of around 6% can more than double the leads your existing traffic produces, a $10,000–$15,000 investment in professional copy becomes much easier to justify.
For a five-page site, a full project — from discovery through to delivery — typically takes two to four weeks. Larger sites with ten or more pages usually run six weeks or more, depending on scope, feedback cycles, and approval timelines. The strategic work that happens before writing (auditing the current site, building the messaging framework, mapping the site structure) adds time upfront but significantly reduces the number of revisions needed once writing begins.
Usually: the work that happens before writing starts. A cheaper copywriter tends to write from a brief. A more experienced one audits what's currently broken, researches your buyers and competitors, builds a messaging strategy, and then writes from that foundation. The copy itself may look similar on the surface (both are words on a page) but one is built around what your specific buyers respond to, and one is a professional guess. For most SME websites where the copy needs to do real conversion work, the difference in outcome tends to be significant.
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Your audience can spot AI-written content. They just can't explain how.How AI-written content loses readers before it makes its point, and why human writing is becoming a competitive advantage
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