Plain English is a conversion tactic, not a compliance checkbox

Plain English is a conversion tactic

Most businesses meet plain English as a rule imposed from outside. Accessibility guidance says do it, a public sector client insists on it, or a style guide arrives with a list of banned words. Filed like that, it becomes a task for someone else and a box to tick before publishing.

I think that is the wrong department. After more than 20 years in communications and marketing, across the public and commercial sectors, my view is that clarity is one of the cheapest conversion tactics available to a small business, and one of the few you can apply this afternoon without buying anything.

The argument is short. Every sentence a reader has to decode costs them effort. They spend that effort while deciding whether to contact you, and they have not committed to you yet. Nobody abandons a page and thinks 'the writing was too clear'. Plenty of people leave because they could not tell what was on offer, could not find the price, or could not work out what would happen after they filled in the form.

That view came out of public-sector work, where unclear writing is not an aesthetic problem. It can stop someone claiming money they are entitled to. It can make a deadline easy to miss. It can leave a person unsure what evidence they need to provide. I worked in places where a clever headline was never worth an extra call to a contact centre.

The stakes on your website are lower. The reader's behaviour is the same. Someone deciding whether to contact you has limited time, may be comparing you with 3 alternatives, and may be buying this kind of service for the first time. If your copy makes them work, they do not admire the writing. They leave.

The evidence, and the step I am taking beyond it

I want to separate 2 things: what has been measured, and what I am arguing from it. This topic attracts confident numbers that fall apart when you look for the source, and I would rather show you the join.

The strongest evidence I know of is a usability study by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen, run in 1997 with 51 experienced web users. They tested the same site content written 5 ways. Concise text scored 58% better on their usability measure, a scannable layout 47% better, neutral wording in place of promotional wording 27% better, and a version combining all 3 scored 124% better. Their explanation for the promotional-language result is the useful part: hyperbole imposes a cognitive burden, because readers spend effort discounting the exaggeration instead of taking in the information. The same research found that 79% of users scanned a new page rather than reading it word by word.

The limits matter. That study is from 1997, on 51 people, on the web as it existed then. Their measure combined task time, errors, memory and satisfaction. It did not measure enquiries, sales or revenue. A percentage improvement on a 1997 usability index is not a promise about your conversion rate.

The second source is GOV.UK's guidance on clear language, which records that 1 in 6 adults in England have very poor literacy skills, and that readers with higher literacy prefer plain English because it lets them understand the information faster. It cites research on legal documents where 80% of people preferred sentences in clear English, and the preference grew as the issue became more complex.

What none of this measures is money. I have not found a study that tracks plain English through to enquiries or sales on a commercial site, and I am not going to invent one.

So here is the step I am taking, marked as mine. What has been measured is that clear writing makes people faster, more accurate and more satisfied, and that promotional language slows them down. What I am asserting is that this converts, for 3 reasons drawn from doing the work rather than from a paper.

Understanding comes before deciding. Nobody buys a service they cannot describe. If a reader finishes your services page unable to say what you sell and what it would cost, the sale was lost at comprehension, and no amount of persuasion further down the page recovers it.

Confusion and objection look identical in your analytics. You cannot tell the visitor who left because you were wrong for them from the visitor who left because they could not work out whether you were wrong for them. The first is fine. The second is a leak, and it is invisible, which is why it goes unfixed for years while people rewrite headlines instead.

The readers worth most are the ones with least patience. In my experience the better-qualified enquiry usually comes from someone who is busy, has been let down before and is comparing you against 2 or 3 others. That reader gives you the least time and is the most expensive to lose.

I would put it this way: I cannot show you that clarity lifts your conversion rate by a stated percentage, and I would distrust anyone who offers you that number. I am confident enough in the direction to make it the first thing I fix on a page, ahead of design, offer wording or calls to action, because it is the change with the lowest cost and the fewest ways to go wrong.

A worked rewrite

The example below is a composite. I wrote both versions to show the pattern, using the kind of copy I see on specialist service pages. It is not lifted from a client site.

The business in it is credible and has a real offer. The original simply makes the reader dig for it.

The dense version:

Through a collaborative and insight-led discovery process, I partner with ambitious founder-led businesses to uncover the strategic opportunities within their existing content ecosystem.

My bespoke content consultancy offering provides the clarity, alignment and momentum required to elevate your communications beyond fragmented activity and towards a more purposeful, audience-centric presence.

Whether you are navigating a period of brand evolution or seeking to unlock greater value from your content investment, I create tailored strategic frameworks that enable your business to communicate with consistency, confidence and impact.

The clear version:

I help founder-led businesses work out what their content needs to do before they publish more of it.

I start by looking at what you already have: your website, your sales conversations and the questions customers keep asking. Then I show you what to fix, what to stop publishing and what is worth creating next.

You leave with a strategy you can use. It gives you clearer priorities, stronger core pages and content that supports the direction the business is taking.

The word count falls by about a third. The information goes up, because the second version names the inputs and the outputs and the first version names neither.

The 6 edits that did the work

This is the part worth keeping. Plain English is not a mood you write in. It is a set of specific edits, and these are the ones that carry most of the load.

Edit	What you are looking for	In the rewrite
Put the subject and verb first	The sentence opens with a subordinate clause, so the reader waits to find out who does what	'Through a collaborative and insight-led discovery process, I partner with' becomes 'I help founder-led businesses'
Turn nominalisations back into verbs	Abstract nouns ending in -ion, -ment, -ance that hide an action	'discovery process' becomes 'looking at what you already have'
Replace the abstraction with the work	A claim that describes the value of a thing rather than the thing	'uncover the strategic opportunities' becomes 'show you what to fix, what to stop publishing and what is worth creating next'
Name the reader's outcome in concrete terms	Outcomes stated as qualities: clarity, alignment, momentum, impact	'clarity, alignment and momentum' becomes 'clearer priorities, stronger core pages'
Cut the hedge words that carry no condition	bespoke, tailored, holistic, strategic used as decoration rather than distinction	'bespoke content consultancy offering' becomes 'a strategy you can use'
Split any sentence carrying 2 ideas	Sentences over about 25 words, or joined by 'and' where the halves are unrelated	The third paragraph splits into 2 sentences

Run those 6 over your homepage and services page and you will do most of what a plain English edit achieves. None of them require you to shorten the page or remove the argument.

Plain English does not mean simple ideas

The common objection is that this dumbs the writing down, or strips out the technical vocabulary a professional audience expects. That is not what it asks of you.

Keep a technical term when it is the shortest accurate word and your reader knows it. A structural engineer writing for structural engineers should say what they mean. The test is whether the term is doing work or doing display. 'Deflection' is precise. 'Content ecosystem' is not a technical term, it is a vague one in technical clothing.

Where the term is necessary but unfamiliar, define it once, in the sentence where it first appears, then use it consistently. Switching between a plain phrase and a technical one for variety makes the reader wonder whether you mean 2 different things.

The complexity that survives plain English is the complexity in the subject. What goes is the complexity you added.

Testing it without fooling yourself

Readability tools are worth using and worth distrusting. Formulas such as Flesch reading ease and the Hemingway editor's grade level count syllables, word length and sentence length. They cannot tell whether the sentence is true, whether the order is logical, or whether the reader now knows what to do. You can score well and still be incomprehensible, and a short sentence full of jargon will pass.

Three checks are better than the score.

• The first-read test. Give the page to someone outside your business and ask what you sell, who it is for and what happens if they get in touch. Do not explain first. If they cannot answer all 3, the page has not done its job.
• The decision sentence. Find the single sentence carrying the decision: what the service is, how it is priced, or what happens after an enquiry. Ask whether a stranger understands it on one pass. This is where I start when I rewrite a page.
• The worst-day test, which I set out in what government content design taught me. Assume the reader is tired, rushed and doubtful, and ask whether the page still works.

Where brand voice quietly costs you

Voice should shape how you say something. It should not obscure what you are saying.

You can be direct and still sound like yourself. You can be warm without being vague. The problem starts when a business treats distinctiveness as a reason to avoid ordinary words. It wants to sound premium, so it calls a price an investment. It wants to sound innovative, so it sells transformative solutions. It wants to sound friendly, so it puts jokes ahead of the explanation.

I see it in calls to action that say 'start your journey' instead of saying what happens when someone gets in touch. I see it in about pages that make readers work through a founder story before they can identify the service.

A distinctive phrase can earn its place, if it does a job. 'Making ideas matter' sounds fine and tells a new visitor nothing about whether you offer brand strategy, writing or consultancy. 'Content strategy for businesses that have outgrown random publishing' gives them a reason to keep reading, and it still has a point of view. It just makes the point visible.

This matters most on high-intent pages. Your homepage, service pages, pricing and contact process are not the places to test whether a reader appreciates subtlety.

Notice what did not change in the rewrite above. It is still calm. It still speaks to founder-led businesses. It still presents the work as strategic rather than cheap. What went was the language that sounded professional without communicating much.

If you want to start somewhere, take the sentence on your services page that carries the decision and apply the 6 edits to it. That sentence is doing more commercial work than anything else on the page. It is also, in my experience, the one most likely to have been written to impress rather than to inform.