You ran the ads. You sent the email. People are landing on the page. And then... nothing. They read, they scroll, maybe they hover over the button — and they leave.
When a page underperforms, most people reach for the wrong lever. They redesign the hero. They swap the stock photo. They argue about the shade of the button. But nine times out of ten the problem isn't the design — it's the words. Copy is the part of the page that actually does the persuading, and it's the part almost nobody audits on purpose.
The good news: copy is unusually easy to diagnose. You don't need a heatmap or a six-week test to spot the most common conversion killers. You need to read your own page slowly, like a skeptical stranger would, against a short checklist. That's what this guide is.
By the end you'll know:
- The eight copy dimensions that decide whether words convert
- How to tell a real value proposition from a vague one
- The "friction words" quietly killing your buttons and forms
- How to fake-detect your own urgency and scarcity before customers do
- How to rewrite a weak section using a simple before → after method
Part 1 — The Ask: Is Your CTA Doing Its Job?
The call to action is the one piece of copy with a job title. If it's weak, nothing upstream matters.
1. Clarity — does the button say what happens next?
Your CTA should name the action and, ideally, the reward. Vague buttons make people hesitate, and hesitation kills conversions.
What "bad" looks like: "Submit." "Learn more." "Get started." "Continue." These are filler verbs. The visitor can't tell what they're committing to.
What to do: Make the button describe the outcome, in the visitor's voice. "Submit" becomes "Get my free quote." "Learn more" becomes "See pricing." "Get started" becomes "Start my 14-day trial." A useful gut check: read the button out of context. If you can't tell what the page sells from the button alone, rewrite it.
2. Placement — is the ask where the decision happens?
A single CTA buried at the bottom assumes everyone reads top to bottom and decides at the end. They don't.
What "bad" looks like: One button, far below the fold, and nothing above it. Or the opposite — a button demanding "Buy now" before you've said what the thing is or what it costs.
What to do: Put a primary CTA within the first screenful, then repeat it after each natural decision point (after the benefits, after pricing, after social proof). Match the ask to the visitor's readiness: a cold visitor near the top might get "See how it works," while the same button at the bottom can confidently say "Buy now." One primary action per screen — competing buttons split attention and convert worse than one clear one.
Part 2 — The Promise: Value, Friction, and Honesty
3. Value proposition — would a stranger get it in five seconds?
Your value proposition is the answer to "what is this, who is it for, and why should I care?" It usually lives in the headline and subhead. If it's weak or generic, the rest of the page is decoration.
What "bad" looks like: "Welcome to Acme." "The best solution for your business." "We help companies grow." These describe nothing. Swap in a competitor's name and they'd still be true — which means they say nothing about you.
What to do: State the specific outcome for a specific person. "Bookkeeping for restaurants, done by people who've run one" beats "Accounting services you can trust." A test: cover your logo and read the headline. If it could belong to any company in your category, it isn't a value proposition yet. (If your whole site sounds generic and interchangeable page to page, that's a separate problem — see our guide on keeping your brand voice consistent.)
4. Friction words — what are you accidentally making people dread?
Some words add psychological weight. They make a free thing feel expensive and an easy thing feel like work.
What "bad" looks like: "Submit," "buy," "purchase," "spam," "obligation," "sign up," "register," "fill out the form below." Even reassurances can backfire — writing "we won't spam you" plants the word spam next to your brand.
What to do: Replace cost-and-effort words with value-and-ease words. "Buy" → "get." "Submit" → "send" or the outcome itself. "Sign up" → "start." "Fill out the form below" → just label the form. State privacy positively: "We'll only email you about your order." Read your page and circle every word that implies effort, risk, or spending. Each one is a tiny weight on the scale.
5. Urgency and scarcity — is it real, or do they smell it?
Genuine urgency works. Fake urgency is one of the fastest ways to lose trust, and shoppers are very good at spotting it.
What "bad" looks like: A countdown timer that resets when you reload. "Only 3 left!" on an infinite digital product. "Sale ends tonight!" every single night. Once a visitor catches one lie, they discount everything else you say.
What to do: Only claim urgency you can defend. Real deadlines (an enrollment window, a price increase you'll actually honor), real limits (a cohort cap, physical inventory), real consequences ("rates lock at today's number"). If you have no honest scarcity, don't manufacture it — lean on a concrete benefit instead. A true "join the next cohort, starts March 3" outperforms a fake "ACT NOW" because people believe it.
Part 3 — The Read: Specificity, Clarity, and Proof
6. Readability — can a busy, distracted person skim it?
Web copy isn't read, it's scanned. Dense, clause-heavy writing makes people bounce before they reach your point.
What "bad" looks like: Long paragraphs, 30-word sentences, abstract jargon ("leverage synergistic solutions"), and a wall of text with no headings. If you have to re-read a sentence to parse it, so will your customer — and they won't bother.
What to do: Aim for short sentences and short paragraphs. A practical target is a Flesch Reading Ease score around 60 or higher (roughly an 8th–9th grade reading level) for general audiences — that's not dumbing down, it's respecting attention. You can check any text's Flesch score for free in Hemingway Editor, or in Microsoft Word's built-in readability stats. Cut filler, break up paragraphs, and turn lists-in-prose into actual bullet lists.
7. Specificity — vague claims persuade no one
Concrete beats abstract every time. Specifics are believable; generalities sound like everyone else.
What "bad" looks like: "World-class support." "Lightning-fast." "Trusted by thousands." "Save time and money." These are claims with no edges — nothing to picture, nothing to verify.
What to do: Replace adjectives with numbers, names, and details. "World-class support" → "Real humans answer in under 5 minutes, 7 days a week." "Trusted by thousands" → "Used by 4,200 dental practices." "Save time" → "Cuts month-end close from 3 days to 4 hours." If you can attach a number, a timeframe, or a named example, do it. Specificity is also what separates content that works from content that just fills space — more on that in our content effectiveness guide.
8. Risk reversal and social proof — who removes the fear?
Two forces stop a ready buyer at the last second: fear of being wrong, and the absence of anyone else having gone first. Good copy handles both.
What "bad" looks like: No guarantee, no return policy, no mention of what happens if it doesn't work — so the buyer carries all the risk. And zero proof: no reviews, no logos, no testimonials, or a vague "Our customers love us!" with no actual customer attached.
What to do: State your risk reversal in plain words near the CTA — "30-day money-back guarantee, no questions, cancel anytime." Then show proof a skeptic would believe: specific testimonials with full names (and photos or companies), real review counts and star ratings, recognizable client logos, or concrete results. A testimonial that says "Marcus cut our no-shows 40% in two months — Dr. Lena Ruiz, Bright Smile Dental" does more than a hundred that say "Great service!"
Putting It Together — Three Before → After Rewrites
Diagnosis is only half the job. Here's the method in action.
Example 1 — A generic hero.
Before: "Welcome to PayFlow. The smarter way to manage your business finances."
After: "Get paid 9 days faster. PayFlow sends, tracks, and chases your invoices automatically — so you stop doing it by hand."
What changed: a specific outcome (9 days faster), a clear who/what, and a concrete benefit instead of "smarter."
Example 2 — A dead button.
Before: "Submit" (under a form labeled Request Information)
After: "Send me my quote" (under a form labeled Get your free quote in 1 minute)
What changed: the button names the reward, the form sets a tiny time expectation, and "free" reduces perceived cost.
Example 3 — Fake urgency and no proof.
Before: "Hurry — limited spots! Trusted by thousands of happy customers."
After: "Next cohort starts March 3 (16 of 25 seats left). Used by 4,200 teams — including the one that wrote this: 'We onboarded in a week.' — Priya N., Head of Ops, Northwind."
What changed: the scarcity became true and checkable, and the proof got a name, a number, and a face.
This checklist will fix the copy problems you can find by reading carefully. What it can't do is tell you which fix will move your numbers the most, or weigh the eight dimensions against each other for your specific page and audience.
A few things a manual read tends to miss:
- Scoring and prioritization — knowing your CTA is a 4/10 and your value prop an 8/10, so you fix the right thing first.
- An objective readability number — actually computing the Flesch score on every section, not eyeballing it.
- Blind-spot detection — you wrote the copy, so you can't unsee what you meant; the curse of knowledge hides your worst lines from you.
- A like-for-like rewrite of your exact sentences, dimension by dimension, rather than the examples above.
If you'd rather not audit your own copy line by line — and honestly, the curse of knowledge makes auditing your own words the hardest version of this — point our tool at the page and let it do the read for you.
The Conversion Copy Audit scores all eight dimensions on this page — CTA clarity and placement, value-proposition strength, friction words, urgency and scarcity authenticity, readability (with the actual Flesch score), specificity, risk reversal, and social proof — and then hands you concrete before → after rewrites drawn from your real copy, not generic examples. It's $19.99 per page: a fraction of an agency retainer, no subscription, delivered in under 24 hours. Run a Conversion Copy Audit on your page and you'll get the scored breakdown plus the rewrites, ready to paste.
Rather have it done for you? The Conversion Copy Audit pulls the data, runs every check above, and hands you a prioritized, plain-English report in under 24 hours — a fraction of an agency retainer, no subscription, no upsell.