01Start from what you already say out loud
You have explained your business a thousand times, out loud, to people who were deciding whether to buy. That explanation is already better than anything you will produce staring at a blank page, because it was written under pressure and edited by every confused face you have ever seen. Record yourself answering three questions: what you do, for whom, and why you rather than the next one. Transcribe it, cut the filler, and you will usually find most of a homepage. Keep the specific numbers you say naturally, because those are the parts a competitor cannot repeat.
- Record yourself answering: what do you do, for whom, and why you rather than the next one.
- Transcribe it and cut the filler. What remains is usually most of the homepage.
- Keep the specific numbers you say naturally: years, guarantees, how long a job takes.
- Write the way you speak. If you would not say it to a customer's face, do not put it on the page.
02Phrases to delete on sight
These appear on almost every small business site and none of them survive a reader deciding whether to call you. The test is simple and slightly uncomfortable: would you say this sentence out loud, in your own shop, to a customer standing in front of you? Welcome to our website fails immediately. So does passionate about excellence, which nobody has ever chosen a supplier for. The deeper problem with adjectives like innovative and dynamic is that a competitor could paste them onto their own page unchanged, which means they are not describing you at all, they are occupying the space where a description should be.
- Welcome to our website. The visitor knows where they are.
- We offer a wide range of quality services. This describes every business that has ever existed.
- Passionate about excellence. Nobody has ever chosen a supplier for this.
- Innovative, dynamic, professional. Adjectives a competitor could paste onto their own page unchanged.
- Anything you would be embarrassed to say aloud in your own shop.
03A structure that works for any service page
Use the same shape every time and you will write five pages in an evening instead of agonising over one. The structure works because it follows the order a buyer actually thinks in: what is this, is it for me, what happens, what does it cost, how long, what now. Saying honestly who a service is not for is the step people skip and the one that earns the most trust, because it is the only part that could cost you a sale and therefore the only part that reads as true. End with one next step. Two choices at the bottom of a page is the same as none.
- What it is, in one sentence a customer would recognise.
- Who it is for, and honestly who it is not for.
- What happens, step by step, so nobody has to imagine it.
- What it costs, or the range and what moves it.
- How long it takes.
- One next step, and only one.
Writing copy for a brand that did not exist yet
Noryse had no name when we started, so there was nothing to describe. We wrote the positioning first, then the tagline, then six product pages, and the product text came out of the material and the construction rather than out of adjectives. That order matters for any business: decide what you are, in plain words, before writing a single page. Copy written before that decision reads as vague because the decision it depends on has not been made.
See the build: NoryseQuestions, answered
How long should a page be?
As long as it takes to answer the questions and not one line more. A page that answers six questions in four hundred words beats one that answers three in two thousand.
Can I use AI to write it?
To structure and tidy what you already said, yes, and it is genuinely useful there. To invent what your business is, no. It will produce something fluent that could belong to any competitor, which is the exact failure you are trying to avoid.
What if I really cannot write it?
Send what you have and we write it. It is included in the build. Waiting until the text is perfect is the single most common reason a website takes six months instead of two days.
Where PROOF48 fits
Copy is included in the 48 hour build. If you have text we clean it up, and if you do not we write it from what you tell us about the business. You are never blocked waiting on a blank page.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.