Yes, your site looks fabulous. You have obviously dedicated a great deal of time, effort, and talent to making your pages look exactly the way you want. The background is provocative, but professional. The font you agonized over is perfect. Your colours are pure eye-candy. Your visual presentation is absolutely spot-on...but, are you really conveying the message you think you are?

Take a hard look at your content. Better yet, have someone else take a look. Is your message being obscured by typos, simple spelling mistakes, or, worse, poor grammar? The credibility you worked so hard to build may be at serious risk, and the professional image you wish to portray certainly won't come across.

Some of the easiest errors to make, and the easiest to rectify, with a little time and effort, are common spelling and grammatical errors. Take a close look at your copy. Your spell checker will not catch word substitutions. As far as it is concerned, “fro” is a legitimate word, and the word processor does not know you meant to type “for”.

It is of no use to rely on your word processor to catch some of the more common poor usages. Substituting “there” for “their”, or “they’re” are also errors that most spell checkers will ignore, as well as the most stringent grammar settings.

There are any number of typographical errors that will not be caught because that slip of the fingers, in fact, creates a proper word – not, perhaps, the one you were wanting to use but, nonetheless, a proper word.

If English is your second language and you are targeting a mainly English-speaking clientele, or if you simply wish to expand into that market, you owe it to your site to have it professionally edited by a native speaker. Your site will be received much more seriously if your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are up to snuff. As well, your product or service will be viewed  in a vastly more positive way than if it contained errors.

If English is your first language, any discerning visitor will question the credibility of a site that contains sloppy grammar, poor spelling or typos - and, unfortunately, this can lead them to question your ability to deliver, and even, to question your product.

Any sales pitch must be perceived as promoting a viable and desirable service or product.  There is little to desire in a product presentation riddled with mistakes - mistakes that could have easily been remedied with a little care and attention.  This kind of seeming-sloppiness is readily translated, in your visitors’ minds, to an overall attitude of sloppiness that could well extend to the quality of your product.

Simply saying your product is of the highest quality, or loudly proclaiming your service is second to none will not turn your visitors into customers unless they believe you have something of value to offer. You need seamless, well-presented information to convince them to purchase whatever you are selling – free of typos, spelling errors, and grammatical bloopers.

So – how do you achieve this?

There are many professional web-editors available, and their rates vary according to the services you wish to purchase. You can start by using a search tool such as Google, and then narrow down your search from there.

You may also wish to research some promising editors by checking out their web sites and see if they are affiliated with any professional associations. You can often find out a range of services and prices from their web sites.

Once you have narrowed down the field somewhat, contact your short-listed editors and see what kind of arrangements can be made.

Be very clear as to your expectations for your material. Expect your editor to be very clear about what they can and cannot do, in return. You should feel comfortable that they are capable of producing the results you require.

Once the contract has been signed, you will need to supply your editor with your raw copy and any spec they need to complete the job. Then you can relax and leave the work to be completed with the stipulated time frame.

As with any contract, you may choose to use “milestones” as a way to structure payments for a longer job. For a more straightforward assignment, half up front and the rest on completion are common terms of agreement.

…and remember, you can always terminate the agreement if you are not satisfied, or feel the conditions have not been met, but you should only do this as a last resort, if all other avenues of approach have failed.

The best way to ensure a positive, working relationship with your editor is to keep the lines of communication open.

Polished, professional, folksy, fun, down-home, provocative - there are so many adjectives to describe the impact you want to make. A good editor can help you achieve just that.