Words like solutions, quality, passionate and one-stop shop appear on every competitor's services page, so readers skip them. Replace each with the fact it was standing in for: what you do, where, how and how fast.

The paragraph every competitor wrote

Open the services pages of five businesses in the same trade and the same town, and most of them contain the same paragraph.

We provide quality solutions for all your needs. Our passionate team is committed to excellence. We are your one-stop shop.

Each sentence was written in good faith. Together they could describe a printer, an accountant or a landscaper, which is exactly the problem.

A visitor comparing businesses skims past it in a second, looking for anything that says which one to call.

Why these words fail

They fail for two reasons: they cannot be checked, and nobody would say the opposite.

No business describes itself as careless or half-hearted. A word every competitor uses carries no information about yours.

They also cost space. A paragraph of general claims pushes the specifics further down, past the point where many visitors stop reading.

Nor do they help anyone find you. Nobody types passionate team or quality solutions into a search box.

And they sound like advertising, which puts readers on guard just when you want them to trust you.

The usual words, and what they hide

The fifth is the one most worth fixing first. A one-stop shop claims to do many things, and the only convincing version of that claim is the list itself, each item with a line of detail.

The substitution test

For each vague word on the page, ask what fact it was standing in for, and write the fact instead.

Do it on paper, with a pen. On screen, familiar words slide past; printed, they stand out.

Quality workmanship becomes a two-year warranty on labour. Fast response becomes a technician on site the same day in the city. An experienced team becomes the years each person has spent in the trade.

If no fact can be found, the word was only filling space. Delete it and put nothing in its place.

The page usually gets shorter. That is a good sign, not a loss.

Use the words customers use

Trade language and marketing language both get in the way. Customers search, and read, in their own words.

Nobody searches for residential drainage solutions. They search for a blocked drain, and they read the page that says blocked drains.

The best source of those words is the enquiries you already receive. Read the last twenty emails and form messages, and note how people described what they needed.

Use those phrases as the headings on the services page. Pages written in customers' words also tend to match the searches customers type.

A worked example

A small IT support company looked after offices in Richmond and Delta. Its services page offered end-to-end managed IT solutions from a passionate, customer-focused team.

Prospective clients kept asking the same things on the first call: whether the company handled email, whether it ran backups, whether it came on site, and how fast.

None of that was on the page, because every answer had been folded into the word solutions.

The page was rewritten as a list of what the company actually did: setting up and looking after computers, email and backups for offices of five to fifty people, with a technician on site the same day for urgent problems.

Passionate became the number of years the company had been doing this work. Customer-focused became the promise that each client deals with one named technician.

The new page was shorter, and it answered what the first call used to.

Specific does not mean technical

Replacing vague words is not the same as adding jargon. A page full of model numbers and trade terms fails in a different way.

The aim is facts a customer can use: what you do, for whom, where, how long it takes, how it is priced, and what happens next.

Technical detail belongs where it helps a decision, such as the brand of equipment you install or the standard you work to, explained in a phrase.

If a customer would have to look a word up, explain it or choose a plainer one.

Numbers are the most specific words

Numbers carry information that adjectives cannot.

Years in business, jobs completed, response times, warranty lengths, the size of job you take on: each is a fact a visitor can weigh against a competitor's.

Use real numbers only. A figure made up to sound impressive is worse than an adjective, because it can be checked and found wanting.

And round honestly. Nearly twenty years is fine when it is nineteen. It is not fine when it is twelve.

Where vague words creep back in

Vague words return whenever someone writes in a hurry: a new service added at short notice, a page refreshed before a trade show, a brochure pasted onto the site.

They also arrive with templates. Many themes and page builders come with sample text that sounds plausible enough to leave in place.

Read new copy aloud before it goes up. If a sentence would fit a competitor's site unchanged, it needs a fact.

The counter-case

Not every general word has to go. A short opening that sets a tone, warm or formal, is fine if the facts follow straight after.

Some services are hard to put into numbers, such as design, consulting or counselling, where the process and examples of past work carry the weight instead.

And a page can be over-corrected into a dry list nobody enjoys reading.

But for each word every competitor also uses, find the fact behind it, or cut it.

The edit

  1. Print your services page.
  2. Circle every word a competitor could also use.
  3. Write the fact each circled word stood for.
  4. Delete the words with no fact behind them.
  5. Use customers' own phrases as headings.
  6. Add real numbers where you have them.
  7. Read it aloud before publishing.

Step four is the one people resist, because a shorter page feels like less. It is more: every sentence left tells a visitor something they did not know.

The same vague words in visual form are covered in three icons saying quality, service and value.

Frequently asked questions

Which words should come off a services page?

Words every competitor uses: solutions, quality, passionate, best-in-class, one-stop shop, customer-focused and competitive pricing. They cannot be checked, so readers skip them.

What should replace vague marketing words?

The specific fact each word was standing in for, such as the actual service, a warranty, years of experience, a response time or a pricing policy.

What if there is no fact behind a word?

Then it was only filling space. Delete it and put nothing in its place. The page gets shorter, and every remaining sentence tells the visitor something.

Where do I find customers' own words?

In the enquiries you already receive. Read recent emails and form messages, note how people described what they needed, and use those phrases as headings.

Does being specific mean adding technical detail?

No. Use facts a customer can act on, such as what, where, how long and how it is priced, and explain any trade term in a phrase.

Can numbers on a services page backfire?

Only if they are not true. A made-up figure can be checked and found wanting, which is worse than the adjective it replaced. Round honestly.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Services page full of solutions?

Send it to us. We will mark every vague word and suggest the fact that should replace it.

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