Simple — find the core and cut everything else
Simple does not mean dumbed down. It means finding the single most important thing and being willing to sacrifice the rest.
That sacrifice is the hard part. Everything on your list is true, and cutting a true thing feels like losing something. But a message with six points has no point, because a reader remembers none of them.
The test: if your reader remembered exactly one sentence, which would you choose? Now delete what stops that sentence being noticed.
Unexpected — break a pattern, then close the gap
Attention is drawn by a violated expectation, and held by an unanswered question. Both matter: surprise alone is a stunt, and curiosity without payoff is a tease.
The useful version is to open a gap in what somebody knows, then close it. Not "we build fast websites" but "a three-second delay removes two thirds of your enquiries" — which raises a question the reader now wants answered.
The test: does your opening line tell the reader something they did not already assume? If they could have guessed it, it is doing no work.
Concrete — say the thing, not the category
Abstraction is what long experience does to language. The longer you have worked in a field, the more comfortable you become with words like "solutions", "optimisation" and "engagement" — and the less those words mean to anyone else.
Concrete beats abstract because it can be pictured. "A booking system that does not quite handle your kind of booking, so someone re-keys it into the accounts" is memorable. "Process inefficiency" is not, and they describe the same thing.
The test: could somebody draw a picture of what you just wrote? If not, it is abstract.
Credible — let people check
Claims are cheap and everybody knows it. What makes a claim stick is a way for the listener to test it themselves.
The strongest version is an invitation: don’t take our word for it, go and look. That is why this site points people at three live businesses rather than a portfolio of screenshots. A reader who opens one and finds it fast has verified the claim personally, which no assertion can match.
Vivid detail also works, because specifics are harder to fabricate. A precise number is more credible than a round one, and a named limitation is more credible than an unqualified promise.
The test: what could a sceptical reader do, right now, to check whether you are telling the truth?
Emotional — make somebody feel something about one case
People respond to individual cases far more than to aggregates. A statistic about a category is processed analytically, and analysis suppresses feeling.
For a business this rarely means anything dramatic. It usually means describing one recognisable situation precisely enough that the reader feels it — the invoice they cannot evaluate, the week that disappeared into work nobody billed for, the supplier who stopped replying.
The test: does your writing describe a person in a situation, or a market segment with a need?
Stories — the format people rehearse in
A story is not decoration around an argument. It is a format that makes an argument portable, because people retell stories and do not retell propositions.
This is also the practical test of whether your message will spread. A prospect who half-remembers your pitch and mentions it to a colleague is repeating something. Make sure the something is a story with a shape, not a list of capabilities.
The test: could somebody who spoke to you for ten minutes retell what you do, in their own words, tomorrow?
Applying all six to one headline
Take a typical small-business homepage line: *"Professional web design solutions for growing businesses."*
It fails every test. It is not simple — "professional", "solutions" and "growing" are three separate hedges. It is not unexpected; nobody advertises unprofessional web design. It is not concrete; you cannot picture it. It is not credible, because it makes no checkable claim. It carries no feeling. And there is no story in it.
Now the version this site uses on its websites page: *"Websites that load fast, rank high and turn visitors into customers."* Simple — three outcomes, no hedges. Concrete — each one can be measured. Credible — the page immediately follows it with a conversion figure and its source. It could be sharper still on the unexpected axis, which is a fair criticism of it.
That is the whole method: not better adjectives, but fewer claims, made checkable.
In shortTake your homepage headline and run it through the six. Most business headlines fail four of them, and the fix is nearly always fewer claims made more concrete — not stronger adjectives.
Finding the one thing a page must make somebody believe, then cutting everything that competes with it, is the first step of every page we write. More about copywriting →