Nine Words That Ruin a Homepage Headline
A homepage headline does one job: tell a stranger what you do and whether it's for them. Most headlines fail because they're built from words that feel like meaning without carrying any.
Here are the nine we strike first, and what to write instead.
1. Solutions
"Innovative solutions for modern business." What is being solved? A solution with no problem attached is a noun doing nothing.
2. Innovative
Nobody describes themselves as uninnovative, which makes the word worth exactly zero bits of information. Show the innovation; don't claim it.
3. Seamless
Usually means "we hope you won't notice the seams." If the experience is genuinely smooth, describe the thing that used to be rough.
4. Empower
"We empower businesses to..." Whatever follows is the actual claim. Delete the first two words and the sentence gets stronger every time.
5. Leverage
A verb that appears exclusively in sentences that would be clearer with "use." It signals a company writing for other companies rather than for a person.
6. Passionate
Everyone says it, and it's unfalsifiable. Replace it with the evidence you'd use to prove it — twenty years, eight thousand sites, a support line that's actually answered.
7. Best-in-class
Which class? Judged by whom? An unbacked superlative reads as noise, and worse, it invites the reader to start doubting.
8. Transform
"Transform your digital presence." Everyone's transforming. The word has been used so heavily in marketing copy that it now means "change, but vaguely."
9. Your journey
The customer isn't on a journey. They're on a website at 11 p.m. trying to find out if you can fix their broken checkout by Thursday.
What to write instead
Answer these three, in this order, in plain language:
- What do you do? Not the category — the actual service.
- Who is it for? Naming your customer specifically loses you nobody who was ever going to buy.
- Why you? One concrete, checkable claim.
"We maximize websites for high-growth entrepreneurs" works because you can picture it, it names a customer, and it makes a claim you could hold someone to. It isn't clever. Clever is a distant second to clear.
A test worth running
Cover your logo and read your headline to someone outside your industry. Ask them what your company does.
If they say "something with computers?", the headline isn't finished. If they say "they look after websites for busy business owners" — that's the whole job, done.