Website copy grader

1. Copy your homepage headline exactly as it appears — including the bits you meant to change.
2. Copy the first two or three sentences underneath it. That is where visitors decide.
3. Read the five dimension bars, then read the findings, which quote your own words back at you.
4. Start with anything marked as a problem rather than a warning — those are the ones a reader notices.
5. Rewrite, paste the new version in, and compare. The score moving is the fastest feedback available.

There is a Try it on a bad example button. Use it once before grading your own — seeing the tool take apart a piece of textbook-bad copy makes its findings on yours much easier to accept.

Count the times your opening says "we", "our" or "us", and the times it says "you" or "your". In copy that works, "you" wins. In most small business copy, "we" wins by three or four to one.

The reason is understandable. Writing the homepage feels like an introduction, and an introduction is about the person introducing themselves. But the visitor did not arrive wanting to meet you. They arrived with a problem, and copy that opens with who you are asks them to do the translation from your description to their situation.

Most will not bother. They are on a phone with three other tabs open and a leaking pipe, and the page that opens with their problem gets the call.

The fix is mechanical and takes ten minutes: rewrite the first sentence so it starts with the reader's situation rather than your business. "Boiler stopped working? We're out to most of north Boise the same day" does the same job as "We are a family-run heating company established in 1998", and it does it to someone who is actively deciding.

"Committed to excellence." "Quality you can trust." "We pride ourselves on attention to detail." "A wide range of tailored solutions." Every trade has the same handful, and they appear on an enormous proportion of small business websites.

The test that condemns them is simple: could a competitor write the identical sentence? If yes, it is doing no work. It occupies the space where a differentiating fact could have been, and it costs the reader attention they were only ever going to give you a few seconds of.

What is interesting is that underneath each of these phrases there is usually a real fact the owner was reaching for. "Attention to detail" is often "we mask and sheet every room before we start". "Quality you can trust" is often "twelve-month guarantee in writing". The phrase is the placeholder that never got replaced.

So the grader quotes them back rather than giving general advice. Seeing "committed to excellence" printed as a finding, in your own words, prompts the question of what you meant — and the answer to that question is usually the sentence that should be there.

The grader computes a Flesch–Kincaid grade level, which combines sentence length and syllables per word into an approximate school grade. Grade nine means a typical fourteen-year-old could read it comfortably.

Owners often resist aiming that low, on the grounds that their customers are adults and their work is skilled. But reading grade is not a measure of the reader's intelligence — it is a measure of how much effort the text demands, and effort is exactly what a distracted person on a phone will not spend.

National newspapers write at around grade nine to eleven. Successful commercial copy is usually seven to nine. That is not condescension; it is the recognition that even a highly literate reader is skimming on a small screen while something else demands their attention.

The two levers are sentence length and word choice. Split anything past about twenty-five words at its first "and". Replace any word you would not use out loud in the van with the one you would. Both take minutes and both move the grade meaningfully.

One honest caveat: the syllable count in every readability formula is approximate, this one included. Read the output as a band rather than a measurement — the difference between 8.4 and 9.1 is not a finding.

The grader looks for anything a stranger could verify: years in business, a licence or insurance status, a guarantee, a review count, a rating. A surprising proportion of small business homepages contain none of these.

The reason a checkable fact works is that it can be wrong. "We are reliable" is unfalsifiable and therefore costless to say, which is precisely why it persuades nobody. "Licensed, insured, and every job carries a twelve-month written guarantee" is a specific claim someone could hold you to — and a claim you could be held to is the only kind a stranger will provisionally believe.

This is also the cheapest improvement available on most pages. Adding one verifiable fact near the top takes a quarter of an hour and typically does more than rewriting every adjective on the site.

A reader can be completely convinced and still not act, because nothing told them to. The grader checks for instruction verbs — call, text, book, request, get — and for a phone number or an obvious enquiry route in the same neighbourhood.

The instruction needs to be in the same eyeline as the reason to take it. A persuasive opening followed by a contact link three screens down loses the people who were persuaded and then had to go looking.

It should also be one instruction, not four. "Call, or email, or fill in the form, or message us on Facebook" is a menu, and a menu invites deliberation. Pick the way you most want to be contacted, make that the obvious action, and list the alternatives smaller and lower.