Use Clear Language
& Draw Clear Boundaries
vague copy doesn't just confuse visitors, it attracts the wrong ones
tamara scott | march 10, 2026
One of the biggest opportunities I see when I review a website for a new client is a lack of clarity in describing what the company does. Usually this happens on the home page, above the fold. It’s a customer’s first look at how you represent yourself, and you have the opportunity to clearly state who you are and what you stand for.
Instead, we see sweeping generalizations like:
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Global partner
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World-class conglomerate
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Powering progress
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Solutions for tomorrow, today
These are cute phrases that sound powerful, but mean absolutely nothing concrete. Instead of “shipping and warehousing,” the logistics company may say “connecting the world’s retailers.” Okay, how are you connecting them? Is this a marketing company or a trucking company? Vague descriptions like these may sound classy, but they turn off site visitors that can’t quite figure out if they’re in the right place.
On the other hand, many business owners believe that their website is only supposed to attract customers, but they forget that their website should also weed out customers that aren’t a fit for their product. Remember, it’s much more lucrative to sign up a customer that keeps coming back each year than it is to sign up a customer that tries your product and bails.
To successfully attract the right customers—and send away the wrong ones—you need to choose your words carefully and place them well. Here are some guidelines to write by.
1. Explicit language
I’m not saying you should swear at your customers. You need to be explicit about the kinds of work you do and how it helps your customer. A bakery that specializes in donuts should make that clear, otherwise they’ll waste their own time and the potential customer’s time.
An IT managed services business should talk about the kinds of services they provide: web hosting, cloud computing, network optimization? There are so many types of IT managed services, so you need to tell people exactly, explicitly, what you do.
2. Spell out boundaries
Clear boundaries on your website tell visitors whether they’re in the right place. What does your company do? And what do you not do?
It’s not an admission of a shortcoming or a fault of the company. Consider your boundary-setting language as an opportunity to find the right audience. Not the one you can’t serve — or that you would need to spin up an entirely new product sector to serve. You’re niche. Not everyone is going to like it, but that’s the point.
Recently a client mentioned that they were getting a lot of leads asking for cooking oil. This company did supply vegetable oils for other uses, but not cooking oil specifically. What we found from looking at generative chat results and keywords was that the LLMs were interpreting their vegetable oil offerings as also cooking oil. We explicitly spelled out on the page “[company name] does not supply cooking oil,” and saw immediate change within 24 hours in both the answers from generative chats and the contact requests for cooking oil.
3. Easy to understand
Use human language. Even if your company is highly niche and only sells to other highly niche companies, your audience will include researchers, junior team members, and executives that need to understand what your company does without calling in an SME to translate.
There are lots of tools out there that can help you lose the jargon, but you can start by digging into the specifics of the product or services you offer in concrete terms. What is the outcome you provide? What tools does your team use to get there? As a planning exercise, try explaining what you do to a neighbor. If they get that blank look in their eyes, you may still have work to do.
4. Bonus options
If your web copy is already explicit about what you do, draws boundaries, and is written in language anyone can understand, take it to the next level with these three options:
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VALUE FIRST
This is old-school marketing, but it’s stuck around for this long because it works. What value do you create for customers? Put that information in your opening lines.
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ABOVE THE FOLD
Customers that visit your home page should be able to know what you do and the value you provide without taking any action, including scrolling. If visitors can’t connect with your copy quickly, they’ll move on before you can explain further.
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PROMINENT CTA
If your company offers what the visitor is looking for, you want them to be able to contact you as soon as possible. Don’t make them scroll to the bottom of the home page or find your contact information in your menu options. Place that “schedule a demo” or “contact us” button right there by your company description.
