What to say on your business website (and what to leave out)

Most small business websites have the same problem, and it's not the design. It's the words. Pages full of vague claims, buried phone numbers, and paragraphs that could describe almost any business in the country. A visitor reads that and learns nothing, so they leave and try the next search result.

You don't need to be a professional writer to fix this. You need five pages that each do one specific job, and a habit of writing for the person reading instead of the business describing itself.

Your home page has three seconds to say the right thing

A visitor decides almost instantly whether they're in the right place. That decision happens before they've read a full sentence, based mostly on your headline and the few words around it. If those words are vague, the decision goes against you.

Weak: "Excellence in every project, powered by passion and integrity."

Strong: "Licensed plumbing repair and installation, serving Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Free estimates, same-week scheduling."

The formula behind the strong version is simple: what you do, who you serve, one thing that sets you apart, and a clear next step. Nothing abstract, nothing that requires the visitor to guess.

If putting this into plain, specific language is the part that stalls you out, that's exactly what our content writing work handles.

Your about page isn't your resume, it's your trust page

Owners tend to treat the about page like a LinkedIn summary: years in business, certifications, a mission statement. None of that is wrong, but none of it is why a visitor reads this page either. They're checking whether you're a real, competent, trustworthy business before they call.

Weak: A bulleted list of "20+ years combined industry experience" and "committed to excellence."

Strong: A short story of why the business started, who it serves, and one human detail, like the fact that when someone calls, they talk to the person who actually shows up to the job.

We wrote more about the fundamentals that make a site convert in what actually makes a website bring in customers, and the about page is one of the most consistently overlooked pieces of it.

Give each service its own page, not a shared paragraph

If you offer more than two or three services, resist the urge to describe them all on one crowded page. A shared page forces vague language, because you're trying to cover plumbing repair, water heater installs, and drain cleaning in the same three sentences.

A dedicated page per service lets you answer the specific question a searcher actually typed: what's included, who it's for, roughly what it costs or how pricing works, and what happens after they reach out. It also gives search engines a specific page to match to a specific search, instead of asking one page to compete for everything at once.

This is part of why a proper website design project maps out a page per service from the start, rather than adding them later as an afterthought.

Testimonials work harder when they're specific

"Great service, highly recommend" could be about anyone. It tells a new visitor nothing about what problem you solved or what it was actually like to work with you.

Weak: "Great company, very professional!"

Strong: "Our water heater went out on a Sunday and they had someone out that evening. Fixed, no surprise charges, and they explained what happened so it wouldn't happen again."

The second version names a specific problem, a specific outcome, and a specific detail a reader can picture. If you don't have testimonials like that yet, ask happy customers a direct question after the job: what was the problem, and what made the experience good? Their answer is usually better copy than anything you'd write yourself.

Your contact page should remove every excuse

This page has one job: make it effortless to reach you. That means a phone number that's clickable on a phone, a short form that doesn't ask for anything you don't need yet, your service area stated plainly, and hours if they matter for when someone can expect to hear back.

Skip the extra paragraph explaining your company philosophy here. A visitor on this page has already decided to reach out. Don't give them a reason to reconsider by making it harder than it needs to be.

If you're also trying to figure out what all of this should cost to get built properly, we covered that in what a small business website should actually cost. The writing is usually the part owners underestimate, not the design.

Write for scanning, because that's how people actually read

Research on how people read online, including long-running eye-tracking studies from the Nielsen Norman Group, has found that most visitors scan a new page rather than reading it word for word. Short paragraphs, clear headings, and the important point stated up front aren't stylistic choices. They're what actually gets read.

That's also good for search. Search engines favor pages structured around clear questions and direct answers, which is the same structure that helps a skimming visitor find what they need. Writing well for a person and writing well for search overlap far more than most owners assume.

The honest part

None of this is complicated, and none of it requires a marketing degree. It just takes sitting down, page by page, and asking what the visitor actually needs to know here, instead of what you'd like to say about the business.

Most owners know their business well enough to write this. What's usually missing is the time to do it for five or six pages while also running the business day to day. If that's where you're stuck, tell us what you're working with and we'll help you get the words right, page by page.