Here’s something I’ve watched happen a hundred times.
I ask a business owner what they do. They lean back and tell me, in normal words, in about forty seconds. It’s clear, it’s specific, it’s occasionally funny, and by the end I completely understand the business and kind of want to hire them.
Then they send me the copy they wrote for their website.
“Welcome to our website. We are a family owned and operated business dedicated to providing exceptional service to our valued customers. With years of experience in the industry, we pride ourselves on quality workmanship and customer satisfaction.”
Same person. Same business. One of these makes me want to call. The other one makes my eyes slide off the screen.
Something happens when people sit down to write about their own business. They put on a suit that doesn’t fit. They start writing what they think a website is supposed to sound like instead of what they actually sound like, and every ounce of the thing that made them worth hiring evaporates.
Your voice is already good. You just have to stop hiding it.
The words that mean nothing
Start by cutting these. All of them. No exceptions.
- Welcome to our website
- We pride ourselves on
- Quality workmanship
- Exceptional customer service
- Your satisfaction is our priority
- Dedicated to excellence
- Full service solutions
- In today’s fast-paced world
- We go above and beyond
- Attention to detail
- Second to none
- Peace of mind
- We’re passionate about
Here’s the test that catches all of them: could your worst competitor say the exact same sentence with a straight face?
If yes, delete it. It’s not a claim, it’s throat clearing. It’s costing you space and it’s costing you credibility, because the reader has seen that exact sentence on forty other sites this month and it has trained them to skim.
The tragedy is that every one of these phrases was probably true when somebody wrote it. You probably do care about quality. But saying so proves nothing, because the guy who doesn’t care says it too.
Say the specific thing instead
The fix for a generic sentence is almost never a better adjective. It’s a fact.
| Generic | Specific |
|---|---|
| We provide fast, reliable service | We answer the phone in person, and we’re usually on site within 90 minutes |
| Quality workmanship you can trust | If the repair fails within a year, we come back and fix it free |
| Competitive pricing | Flat $89 diagnostic. If you hire us, it comes off the bill. |
| Years of experience | I’ve been doing this for 22 years and about 400 of those jobs were in Murrieta |
| Family owned and operated | It’s me and my son. He does the crawlspaces now, which is the only reason I’m still doing this. |
| We treat your home like our own | We wear booties, we lay drop cloths, and we vacuum before we leave |
Notice what changed. Not the tone. Not the enthusiasm level. Just: vague claim replaced with a checkable fact.
A specific fact is more persuasive than any adjective, because a fact can be false. That’s what makes it worth something. When somebody tells you a number they could be caught on, you believe them a little.
Write it out loud first
The single most useful trick I know, and it costs nothing.
Open your voice memos app. Imagine a customer standing in your driveway asking, “so what do you guys do?” Answer them. Out loud. Don’t write anything, don’t stop to fix it, just talk for two minutes.
Then transcribe it and read it back.
You will find, almost every time, that the spoken version is better than anything you would have typed. It’s specific, because when you talk you naturally reach for real examples. It has rhythm, because speech does. And it sounds like you, because it is you.
Now edit it. Cut the ums, tighten the run-ons, break it into short paragraphs. But do not “professionalize” it. That step is where people ruin it. The unpolished thing you said is the raw material. Your job is to trim it, not to translate it into corporate.
The rest of the rules, fast
Use “you” more than “we.” Count them. If “we” is winning, the copy is about you and the reader has no reason to care. “We offer 24 hour service” versus “Call us at 2am and someone picks up.” Same fact, different owner.
Short sentences. Then a longer one when you want the reader to slow down and feel the weight of something. Then short again.
Lead with the answer. People scan. Put the point in the first sentence of a paragraph, not the last. This is the opposite of how you were taught to write essays and it’s correct for the web.
Contractions. You’re, we’ll, don’t, it’s. Nobody says “do not hesitate to contact us.” People say “just call me.”
One idea per paragraph, three lines max. A wall of text on a phone is a wall.
Cut every sentence that could be removed without losing information. Then read it again and cut more. Almost every piece of copy I write ends up about 40 percent shorter than the first draft, and it’s always better.
Say the thing you’re nervous about saying. “I’m a one man shop, so I book about two weeks out.” That sounds like a weakness. It reads as honesty and competence, and it pre-qualifies the customers who need somebody tomorrow. Owning a limitation buys more trust than hiding it ever will.
What if your voice is quiet?
Not everybody’s voice is the funny, blunt, big personality version. That’s fine, and forcing it is worse than not having it.
If you’re an accountant, a therapist, an estate attorney, your voice might be calm, precise, and reassuring. That IS a voice. Precision is a personality. “I’ll tell you exactly what this will cost before we start, and I won’t bill you for a phone call” is voice, and it’s exactly right for somebody whose customer is anxious about being nickel and dimed.
The goal was never to be entertaining. The goal is to sound like a specific person rather than a committee. Calm and specific beats loud and generic every time.
The test
Here’s the whole thing in one question.
Read your homepage out loud. Would you actually say those words to a customer standing in front of you?
If you’d feel like a fraud saying it out loud, don’t put it on your website. The customer feels that same fraudulence reading it, they just don’t know what they’re reacting to.
The person who explains their business in forty seconds in the driveway is the one people want to hire. Put that person on the website.
I write the copy for every site I build, and the first thing I do is get the owner talking so I can hear how they actually sound. That’s not a formality. It’s the most valuable twenty minutes in the whole project, because everything after it is just arranging the words in the right order.
If you want to hear what your business sounds like written down properly, call me and talk at me for twenty minutes. I’ll send you back the copy for free and you can use it whether you hire me or not.
