No one’s reading all that, so make sure they don’t have to!
One client wrote what I can only describe as essays. A paragraph where a sentence would do, a page you had to scroll through before you even knew if you were in the right place. I remember reading it and thinking: “No one’s reading all that.”
I’m not a professional writer. I’ve never claimed to be one. But content design – the words on the page, not just the layout around them – has quietly become one of the most regular parts of my job, whether I signed up for that or not.
What It Actually Covers
It’s rarely one big rewrite. It’s headers that don’t say what the page is about. Paragraphs doing the job a sentence could. Calls to action that say “Submit” instead of telling you what happens next. Form fields that ask for more than they need. Success messages that confirm nothing actually succeeded. Small things, individually, but a site is made of dozens of them.
A form on one project asked for name, email, phone and company name just to sign up to their newsletter – trimmed down to first name and email, because that’s all that was actually needed here.
This showed up in pretty much every job I’ve had, but it became most regular during the Digital That Delivers programme. Sitting between the client and the agency meant I wasn’t precious about anyone’s original wording – I could say the quiet part out loud: “No one’s reading all that“. Being the outsider is exactly what made that input worth something.
The Essays Client
Back to this… The fix wasn’t clever; it was just honest: header, short supporting text, one clear call to action. Give the reader something to do; don’t make them read for five minutes before they find out if they’re even in the right place. Nobody gets a badge for finishing a page; they get a badge for finding what they came for, and quickly.
How It Actually Runs
Content gets flagged the same way everything else does – during the audit. Notes on what needs improving: paragraphs, headers, CTAs, form fields, success messages, all of it. That goes straight into the brief as its own section, so it’s not a vague aspiration everyone forgets about by design stage – it’s written down as something that’s actually going to be optimised.
Through review, it’s checked the same way design and development are checked: has what was flagged actually been fixed properly? And it doesn’t stop once a site launches – content is something I keep supporting clients on, because “finished” and “as good as it can be” aren’t always the same thing.
Proving It Worked
Opinions about writing are cheap. So the proof is concrete: before-and-after screenshots, and a comparison spreadsheet tracking the smaller stuff specifically, like headings, CTA labels, success and error messages – so a client can see exactly what changed and why.
A confirmation message that just said “Thank you” became “Thanks, we’ve got your message and will reply within one business day” – same moment, but one of them tells you what happens next.
Grammarly and Hemingway help sanity-check the writing itself, mostly so I’m not just asking a client to trust my gut. And for a long time, that’s what it was – trusting my gut. Eye, instinct, years of noticing what works. These days it’s a more concrete process, which is a better place to be, but the instinct is still doing a lot of the early legwork.
Why It’s Part Of The Job
Most people just want to be shown where to go and what to do quickly; they don’t actually want to read a full website. If you get that right, the five-paragraph essay nobody was going to read stops being a problem, because it’s not there anymore.
