A marketing guy told me my website was too wordy and he was absolutely right

I run a small painting crew in Ferndale and always thought my website needed to list every single service I offer. Had this guy from a local startup group look at it during a meetup at the Detroit Shipping Company. He said nobody reads that much text they just want to know if you show up on time and do decent work. I cut my homepage from like 500 words down to 150. Emails about doubled within two weeks just from people saying they liked the simple layout. Now I trust shorter copy over a full resume any day. Has anyone else gotten brutal feedback that actually worked out better?

3 comments

3 Comments

rileygarcia1mo ago

pat781 nailed it with that "let the food speak for itself" line. I read somewhere that the average person only scans about 20% of a webpage before deciding to leave or stay, so cutting down makes sense. It's crazy how hard it is to just trust that less is more when you've spent so long building the thing.

troy_price1mo ago

That 20% scan rate stat goes double on mobile where people's thumbs are literally covering half the page as they scroll. I think the real test is if your recipe still works with someone skipping straight to the ingredient list and directions.

pat7811mo ago

Does it hurt when a stranger tells you your baby is ugly...? I had a similar thing happen with my recipe blog, except I didn't cut words, I just kept rambling about every single ingredient. Business got a lot better once I learned to shut up and let the food speak for itself.