Simplify your website text

TIP

Last Updated: Aug 19th, 2024

During slower periods, you have a chance to make quick, straightforward, and high-impact improvements to your website.

Here’s an idea: take a look at some of your most important pages (like your donation page, key section pages, or your homepage) and see if you can simplify or clarify the transactional text. We spend a lot of time crafting the narrative text that tells our nonprofit’s story, but often overlook the text that leads into calls to action or guides people through choices. But this text is crucial—it either helps or hinders your visitors as they navigate your site.

Think through:

  • Can you remove words or phrases? Try deleting anything that seems unnecessary and see if the transactional text is clearer without it. (It often is!)

  • Are you trying to be clever? Personality is great, but transactional text isn’t the place for jokes or snarky comments (like an option button that says “I don’t want useful information”).

  • Is it plain spoken? Make sure all the text is at an eighth-grade reading level or lower and avoids idioms or jargon.

  • Is it empathetic? Ensure the text works for people in various situations—whether they’re frustrated, scared, or just looking for information. (For instance, “Congratulations on your pregnancy” may not be the right greeting for all visitors to an expectant mother resource page.)

Look at your website through the lens of these questions and you’ll be surprised how much value you can get from cleaning up just a few words.