# How to Write Website Copy That Actually Sells > A house-cleaning service homepage, rewritten line by line, to show what turns a visitor into an enquiry. Lead with the customer's problem, say exactly what you do, and give them one clear thing to click. *Roald, Founder Fonzy · Jul 19, 2026 · 8 min read* Source: https://www.fonzy.ai/blog/how-to-write-website-copy --- **The quick version:** Write website copy that sells by leading with the customer's problem, saying in plain words exactly what you do and who for, backing it with a review or two, and pointing to one clear action. Visitors decide in about ten seconds, so your value has to be obvious in the first line they read. That ten-second number is the whole reason this is hard. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group found that users often leave a web page within 10 to 20 seconds, and to earn several minutes of their attention you have to communicate a clear value proposition inside the first 10. Your homepage does not get a warm-up. The first line is the pitch. So picture a house-cleaning service. The owner, we'll call her Dana, opens a blank page to write her homepage. She types the first thing that feels professional: "Welcome to Dana's Cleaning. Established 2019, we are a family-run company committed to excellence." Then she stares at it. It sounds like a business. It sells nothing. Let's fix it, one principle at a time, and rewrite her page as we go. ## Start with the customer's problem, not your company name Here is Dana's opening line again: "Welcome to Dana's Cleaning. Established 2019, we are a family-run company committed to excellence." Now the rewrite: "Come home to a spotless house without lifting a finger. We clean homes across Leeds so you get your weekends back." The second version never mentions when she was founded, and no customer cares. What they care about is the pile of laundry and the bathroom they have been avoiding. Copy that sells opens on the reader's problem, then shows the after. You are not the hero of your homepage. The customer is, and you are the thing that solves their Saturday. This is the single idea the whole page turns on. Every line either speaks to what the visitor wants or it is taking up space they will not read. ## Say exactly what you do, and exactly who for Vague copy hides. "We offer a range of cleaning solutions tailored to your needs" could be a cleaner, a car wash, or a software company. Specific copy sells because the right person reads it and thinks, that is me. Compare two lines for Dana: - Vague: "Professional cleaning solutions for every requirement." - Specific: "Weekly and fortnightly home cleaning for busy families and rentals in Leeds. Two hours minimum, same cleaner each visit, keys handled safely." The second line does more work in one breath. It names who it is for (busy families, rentals), where (Leeds), and the details that answer the quiet worries (same cleaner, key safety). Specificity is not a limitation. It is how the buyer recognises themselves. If you try to speak to everyone, you land with no one. If your services page needs its own version of this, the same rule holds: one clear sentence per service saying what it includes and what it costs to start. The same instinct drives good [product descriptions](/blog/how-to-write-product-descriptions), where the specific detail is what turns a browser into a buyer. ## Write clear, not clever Dana's friend suggested a headline: "We put the *magic* back in your castle." Cute. It also makes the reader stop and decode it before they know what she sells. That pause is the problem. Copywriter Jessica Jordana puts the goal plainly: "Clear copy can be defined as words that people don't have to work hard to interpret and take action from." That is the bar. Not impressive, not witty, just easy to act on. There is a real reason to keep the words simple beyond taste. A Gallup analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, commissioned by the Barbara Bush Foundation, estimated that 130 million American adults, about 54% of those aged 16 to 74, read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. Write above that and a big share of your visitors quietly bounce. Plain words are not dumbing down. They are the widest door into your business. Clear first does not mean boring, and it does not mean clever always loses. A famous A/B test by CopyHackers actually found a cleverer headline beating the plain one on one specific page. So the honest rule is this: be clear first, and reach for clever only when it does not cost you a shred of clarity. If a reader has to work to understand your headline, clever already lost. ## Give them one clear thing to do Dana's first draft ended with four options: "Call us, email us, book online, or follow us on Instagram." Four choices feels generous. It is actually four ways to hesitate. Pick one primary action per page and make it the loudest thing on it. For Dana, that is "Get your free quote." Everything else, the phone number, the social links, can exist quietly further down, but only one button gets the spotlight. When a visitor decides to act, they should not have to choose how. We go deep on this elsewhere, so I will keep it short here: your button text should describe the payoff, not the mechanism. "Get my free quote" beats "Submit." If you want the full breakdown of what makes a button get clicked, the guide to a [website call to action](/blog/website-call-to-action) covers the wording, the placement, and the colour. On a single dedicated campaign page, the rules tighten further, which is what [landing page best practices](/blog/landing-page-best-practices) are for. ## Put proof next to the ask People do not trust a business because it calls itself trustworthy. They trust it because other people did first. A BrightLocal survey found that 75% of consumers say they always or regularly read online reviews before choosing a local business, and just 3% say they never do. Three quarters of Dana's visitors are looking for reasons to believe her before they call. So give them the reasons, right where they are deciding. Not a lonely "Testimonials" page nobody visits, but one real quote sitting next to the quote button: "Dana's team has cleaned our house every fortnight for two years. Same two people every time, always on time, and I have never once worried about the keys." Rachel, Headingley. That single line does more than any adjective Dana could write about herself. The best proof is specific, named, and placed at the moment of doubt. A star rating near the button. A count of homes cleaned. A photo of the actual team. Proof is not decoration. It is the handrail people hold as they decide. ## Make it skimmable, because nobody reads it all Here is the humbling part. The Nielsen Norman Group also found that on an average web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during a visit, and 20% is the more realistic figure. You could write the perfect paragraph and four out of five people will skip past it. That changes how you build the page, not just what you say. Front-load every point so the first few words carry the meaning. Break the wall of text into short subheads a skimmer can follow like signposts. Keep sentences short. Use lists where you have a list. Dana's rewritten page reads top to bottom in ten seconds even if you never stop on a single paragraph, because the headline, the subheads, and the button tell the whole story on their own. In the work we do rebuilding pages for owner-run businesses, this is the change that surprises people most. A cleaner, a mobile dog groomer, a two-van plumbing outfit: they all arrive with a homepage written to be read start to finish, and their real visitors never do that. The pages that pull in enquiries are the ones you can understand with the sound off, glancing, half-distracted, on a phone in a supermarket queue. Write for that person and you write for everyone. ## What is the 80/20 rule in copywriting? You will see the "80/20 rule" tossed around, usually meaning: spend most of your effort on the headline, because that is the part almost everyone sees and the rest of the page is read by far fewer. The idea traces back to David Ogilvy, who observed that on average many more people read the headline than read the body copy. He did not hand out a tidy percentage you should trust as gospel, so treat the "80/20" as a memory aid, not a law. The point stands: your headline is doing the heavy lifting, so give it the time. If the first line fails, the beautiful paragraph beneath it never gets a reader. ## Dana's homepage, before and after Here is the top of Dana's page as she first wrote it: "Welcome to Dana's Cleaning. Established 2019, we are a family-run company committed to excellence and customer satisfaction. We offer a range of professional cleaning solutions tailored to your needs. Call us, email us, book online, or follow us on Instagram." And here is the rewrite, every principle applied: "Come home to a spotless house without lifting a finger. Weekly and fortnightly home cleaning for busy families and rentals across Leeds. Same cleaner every visit, keys handled safely, two-hour minimum. 'Same two people every fortnight for two years, always on time. I never worry about the keys.' Rachel, Headingley. Get your free quote." Same business. Same owner. One version describes a company, the other sells a Saturday back to a tired parent. Nothing in the rewrite is clever. All of it is clear. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you write website copy that sells? Lead with the customer's problem and the result they want, then say in plain words exactly what you do and who for. Add one piece of real proof, like a named review, near a single clear action. Keep it skimmable, because most visitors read only a fraction of the page. ### How long should homepage copy be? Long enough to be clear, short enough to skim. Since research shows people read a fraction of the words on a page, the win is not more copy but better order: a headline that lands in ten seconds, short subheads, and one obvious next step. Cut any sentence that could sit unchanged on a competitor's site. ### Should website copy be clever or clear? Clear first. Aim for words people do not have to work to understand and act on. Clever is fine only when it never costs clarity, because a headline the reader has to decode has already lost the ten-second window you get to make your point. ### What should a small business homepage include? A problem-led headline, a plain line saying what you do and who for, one or two real reviews near the decision point, and a single primary action such as "Get a free quote." Everything else is secondary. If a section does not help the visitor decide, it can go. The whole game is the first ten seconds, and Dana's rewrite wins them because a stranger understands it at a glance. That is the same standard Fonzy holds every page to when it rebuilds a small-business site: clear before clever, the customer's problem before your founding date, one action before four. Get more enquiries the plain way, and see [how to get more customers](/blog/how-to-get-more-customers) once the copy is pulling its weight. ## Sources - [Nielsen Norman Group: users often leave within 10-20 seconds and need a clear value proposition in the first 10](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-long-do-users-stay-on-web-pages/) - [Nielsen Norman Group: users read at most 28% of the words on an average page](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/) - [BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2024: 75% of consumers always or regularly read reviews before choosing a local business](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey-2024/) - [Gallup analysis of U.S. Dept. of Education data: about 54% of U.S. adults aged 16-74 read below a sixth-grade level](https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/) - [Jessica Jordana: definition of clear copy and when to be clear versus clever](https://jessicajordana.com/when-to-be-clear-or-clever-in-your-copy/) --- Published by [Fonzy](https://www.fonzy.ai) — expert articles that get you found on Google and AI search.