Keep Your Content Simple
A 5 Minute read
Complicated Writing Isn't a Style Problem. It's a Hiding Place.
"We leverage bespoke, outcome-driven frameworks to deliver transformative value across the client lifecycle."
Read it twice. Still nothing.
Every professional services firm has a sentence like this on its website. Usually near the top.
And the standard advice for fixing it is useless: shorter sentences, fewer syllables, active voice.
That treats it as a writing problem.
It isn't.
People write like that on purpose. Not consciously, but not accidentally either.
Why professionals write complicated
Three reasons, and none of them are about style.
It can't be checked. "Transformative value" makes no claim. Nobody can come back in six months and say you were wrong about it. Vagueness is risk management.
It sounds senior. There's a real fear that plain language makes you look junior. That if a client can understand it easily, they'll wonder what they're paying for.
It hides an undecided position. This is the big one. When a firm hasn't decided who it's for or what it believes, the writing has nothing specific to say so it fills the space with words that sound like meaning.
You can't write clearly about a decision you haven't made.
Which is why most "we need better copy" projects fail. The copy was never the problem.
Simple isn't the same as simplified
Worth being precise here, because this advice gets misread constantly.
Simple doesn't mean short words for simple ideas.
It means making a clear claim about a complicated thing.
Complicated: "We optimise operational efficiency across your delivery function"
Simple: "Your projects take six weeks longer than you quote for. We find out why"
The second one isn't dumbed down. It's more specific, more expert and more falsifiable. It also tells a reader whether they're the right person for it.
The complexity should live in the work. Not in the description of the work.
But won't I look junior?
The fear is real. The logic is backwards.
Vagueness doesn't read as sophistication to a buyer. It reads as either evasive or inexperienced because the people who can't explain something plainly are usually the ones who don't fully understand it yet.
Think about the experts you actually rate. The surgeon, the barrister, the consultant you trust.
They don't perform complexity. They explain hard things in a way that makes you feel clever.
That's what mastery sounds like from the outside.
Where it usually falls apart
The usual suspects:
Jargon as a seniority signal → your buyer either doesn't know the term or is tired of it
Hedging everything → "can help to potentially improve" is four words of insurance and zero claim
Describing your process → your five phases are reassuring to you and abstract to them
Three ideas per sentence → each one fine, all three unreadable together
Writing for peers → the tell is when your competitors compliment it and no clients respond
How to fix it
1. One idea per sentence. If there's an "and" in the middle, there are probably two.
2. Delete the qualifiers. Can, may, help to, potentially, often. Say it or don't.
3. Name things plainly. "We rebuild websites" beats "digital experience transformation." Every time.
4. Read it aloud. Anything you'd never say to a client in a meeting shouldn't be on your site.
5. Make it checkable. A claim someone could disagree with is worth more than one nobody can evaluate.
6. Test it on an outsider. Someone with no knowledge of your sector should be able to say what you do and who for.
The bit most people skip
Here's the test that actually matters.
Not whether your buyer understands it.
Whether they can repeat it.
Because in professional services, the person reading your website is rarely the person who decides alone. At some point they have to turn to a colleague, or a partner, or a board, and explain why you.
They'll do that from memory. In a sentence. Badly.
If your positioning takes a paragraph and three qualifiers to convey, it doesn't survive that moment. It gets flattened into "they seemed alright", which loses to the competitor whose pitch could be repeated in nine words.
So write the nine words.
Then check: could a client who half-remembers you get it roughly right?
That's a much harder standard than being clear. Clear means understood while reading. Repeatable means it survives a week, a bad summary, and a room you're not in.
Most firms have never tested for it. Ask three clients how they'd describe what you do. If you get three different answers, none of them yours, the writing isn't simple enough yet.
The takeaway
Complicated writing usually means one of two things: you're hiding, or you haven't decided.
Fix the decision first. The words get easier immediately.
Then make a claim someone could disagree with, say it in a sentence you'd use out loud, and cut every qualifier protecting you from being wrong.
And check it survives being repeated by someone who isn't paying attention.
Because that's who's actually explaining you to the person with the budget.
