Write a better website description

Before you start

• Nothing. This works before you create anything, and it is the cheapest thing you can do to improve the result.

The description is the whole brief. Everything on the finished website comes out of it. This tutorial is an exercise: you write a first attempt, then improve it in four passes.

The example below follows a cleaning company, but the passes work for any business.

1. Write a first attempt without thinking about it

   One or two sentences, however they come out. You are going to improve this, so it does not matter that it is thin.

   • Example: We are a cleaning company in Tacoma. We want a website.

2. Pass one: name every service

   List the individual things you sell, in the words a customer would use. Vague categories produce vague sections.

   • Now: We clean homes and offices in Tacoma. We do recurring cleans, deep cleans, and move-in and move-out cleans.

3. Pass two: say who it is for

   The customer shapes the tone and the examples. "Busy households and small offices" produces different copy from "letting agents and property managers".

   • Now: We clean homes and offices across Tacoma and the south Puget Sound, for busy households, small offices and letting agents.

4. Pass three: say what a visitor should do

   This decides the calls to action and where they appear. Quote requests, bookings, phone calls and orders each produce a different website.

   • Add: I want the website to bring in quote requests. People should be able to see what we cover and ask for a price without calling.

5. Pass four: cut everything that is not a fact about your business

   Remove design instructions, adjectives about how good you are, and anything you are not ready to publish.

   • Colours and fonts are set in the editor, where you can see them.
   • Reviews, ratings and certifications are added by you as real content; the generator will not invent them.
   • Prices you have not decided on are much easier to add later than to remove from every section.

6. Read it back as if you were the generator

   Ask yourself: how many pages does this suggest? Which services get their own section? What is the one action on the home page? If you cannot answer, neither can the generator.

Final checklist

Take the finished description to the create screen. If you want the reasoning behind each pass, Writing your business description explains what the generator does with each part.