Why most small business copy reads like it was written by a committee.
It wasn't, of course. It was written by you, at 11pm, under pressure, trying to sound "professional". And that is exactly the problem. When we sit down to write about our own business, we switch into a formal register that we'd never use face-to-face. The plumber who'd tell a customer "I sort leaks, fast, and I clean up after myself" somehow ends up writing "we provide comprehensive plumbing solutions across the region."
I've seen this pattern dozens of times building sites for Kent businesses. The words that make someone pick up the phone are almost never the polished ones — they're the honest, specific, slightly-too-direct ones that the owner almost deleted before publishing.
Start with what you actually say out loud.
Before you open a text editor, have a conversation. Ring a friend who doesn't work in your industry and explain what you do, who it's for, and why someone should choose you over the next person in a Google search. Record it on your phone — the Voice Memos app on iOS will do fine. Then listen back.
That recording contains your homepage. Not verbatim, but structurally. You'll say things like "the reason people usually come to me is..." and "what I don't do is..." and "the difference is that I actually..." — those are your headings. Write them down before you reach for anything more polished.
I did this exercise with a Deal-based electrician last year. His recorded explanation was genuinely better than any of the three draft homepages he'd written. We tidied the grammar and that was roughly it.
The homepage: three questions your visitors are asking.
When someone lands on your site — especially from a Google search or a local recommendation — they're trying to answer three things almost simultaneously. Is this for me? Do I trust this person? What do I do next? Your homepage copy needs to answer all three, in roughly that order, before the visitor's attention runs out.
"Is this for me" is answered by being specific about who you serve and where. "Electricians in Faversham and the surrounding villages" does far more work than "East Kent electricians". The more clearly you describe the person you help, the more confidently that person believes you can help them.
"Do I trust this person" is where most small business sites go wrong. Generic quality claims do nothing. A specific number ("over 200 jobs in the last three years"), a real result ("most of my bookings come from referrals"), or even a direct statement about how you work ("I always quote in writing before I start") all carry more weight than any amount of "committed to excellence".
"What do I do next" is usually the easiest to fix. One clear action — a phone number, a booking link, a WhatsApp button — not four options presented with equal weight.
About pages: the one everyone gets backwards.
The instinct is to write a mini-biography. Where you trained, how many years you've been going, the qualifications on the wall. That stuff matters, but it's not what the reader is there for. They came to the About page because they're half-convinced and want a reason to tip over into calling you. They want to know whether they'll like working with you, not your full employment history.
A structure that works is: one paragraph on why you do this (genuine, not corporate mission-statement phrasing), one paragraph on how you actually work and what that means for the customer, then your credentials and experience. In that order. The credentials become evidence for a person they've already warmed to, rather than a CV they're skimming.
Honestly, a single good photo of you working — not a stock image, not a professional headshot with a plain background — does more for trust than two paragraphs of text. A Canterbury joiner I worked with was sceptical about this. We used a photo of him mid-job on a kitchen renovation. His enquiry rate from the About page roughly doubled within a month.
Services pages: less is almost always more.
The temptation is to list everything you can do, because you're worried about putting someone off. In practice it has the opposite effect — a wall of services makes it hard for the visitor to identify what they actually need, and they leave rather than decode it.
Pick the services you most want to be known for and write a proper paragraph about each. Not a bullet list of features, but a real explanation: what the job involves, who it's right for, roughly what it costs or how pricing works, and how someone gets started. The last point matters more than people realise — if a visitor can't see a clear path to getting a quote, a lot of them won't bother.
On pricing: I know the instinct is to avoid publishing prices, especially for jobs that vary. You don't have to publish a fixed price. But even "day rates from £X" or "most kitchen refits come in between £Y and £Z" answers a filtering question for the reader and saves you both time. You'll get fewer tyre-kicker enquiries and more serious ones.
The words and phrases worth cutting right now.
A short list of things I'd delete on sight from any small business website, because they've been used so many times they've lost all meaning: "passionate about", "quality service", "competitive prices", "customer satisfaction", "going the extra mile", "one-stop shop", "based in the heart of", and anything that ends in "solutions".
Replace them with the specific thing you actually mean. "Competitive prices" becomes "most quotes come back under £300 for a standard installation". "Passionate about" becomes "I've been doing this for eleven years and I still find the detail work genuinely satisfying" — or just gets cut entirely, because your work will show it. "Customer satisfaction" becomes a direct quote from a Google review, which carries twenty times the weight.
Speaking of which: if you have a Google Business Profile with real reviews (and if you don't, that's a separate conversation), pull the best two or three sentences directly onto your website. Not a widget that might not load — copy the text, credit the reviewer's first name and their star rating, and put it somewhere visible. Real words from real people beat anything you write about yourself.
One practical way to get unstuck if you're staring at a blank page.
Copy nothing, but prompt yourself. Take each section of your site and write the answer to a specific question rather than trying to write "the copy". For the homepage headline: what is the one thing I want someone to remember about my business? For the first paragraph: who is my ideal customer and what problem are they having when they find me? For the services list: what is the job and what does the customer end up with at the end of it?
Write the answers as you'd write an email to a friend — quickly, without editing as you go. Then go back and clean it up. You'll find it's already most of the way there. The draft that comes from answering a direct question is almost always better than the draft that comes from staring at a blank page trying to sound impressive.
If you want a shortcut, tools like Hemingway Editor (free, online) will flag sentences that are too dense or too passive. It won't write for you, but it'll show you where the reader is going to lose the thread. Worth five minutes of your time before you publish anything.