Write it plainly
Write for the customer who reads English slowly
Some of your customers find English hard work. Write so they can follow you, and your marketing gets clearer for everyone.
Picture a customer on your website. They want what you sell. They have the money. But English is hard work for them, and every long word is a small wall.
Many people live like this. Their English is good enough to shop, work and pay bills. A clever marketing page is another matter. When your website says "leverage our end-to-end solution to unlock synergies", they read it twice. Then they leave, and they buy from someone they understand.
Here is the surprise. Native speakers skip that sentence too. Writing for the slow reader is simply good writing, with the rules made clearer.
Rule one. Short sentences. One idea each. If a sentence needs a comma and a "which", split it.
Rule two. Common words. "Use" instead of "utilise". "Help" instead of "facilitate". "Start" instead of "commence". There is a reason the great copywriters wrote like this.
Rule three. Say the thing, then the detail. "We fix air conditioners. Same day, in the eastern suburbs." The reader knows what you do in four words. The rest is a bonus.
Rule four. Drop the idioms. "Hit the ground running", "move the needle", "low-hanging fruit". A reader who learnt English from a textbook has to translate the picture before they get the meaning. Many give up.
Rule five. Numbers and names over adjectives. "Open since 1998" beats "long-established". "Serving 40 schools" beats "trusted by the education sector". A number reads the same in every language.
Now a simple test you can do today. Copy your home page into a translation app. Turn it into Spanish, then back into English. Read what comes out.
If it still makes sense, your page is clear. If it turns into nonsense, the problem was never the app. It was your English.
Marketing that needs perfect English to decode it quietly turns away people who were ready to buy. Write so the slowest reader in the room can follow you. Everyone else will enjoy it too, and they will never know why.
