28: Your Headline Matters More Than Your Design | Website Copywriting

What's in this episode

Most local business owners spend weeks perfecting their website's look, the colours, the fonts, the layout, and then slap on a headline like "Helping you achieve financial freedom" and call it done. However, if someone lands on your site and bounces, it's almost never because of the design. It's because your headline didn't stop them. In this episode, I break down why generic headlines are silently killing your website's performance, using a real example from a recent website copy audit I did for a financial planner. Her site looked great. Her business was solid. But her headline could have belonged to literally anyone, a bank, a coach, an app, a newsletter. And that's exactly the problem. I walk you through what a strong headline actually does (spoiler: it's not about being clever), the three things every good headline needs to include, and how to rework yours even if you're not a writer. As a website copywriter who's looked at hundreds of homepages, I can tell you, the fix is almost never a full rewrite. It's just saying the right thing more clearly. I also get into something most people miss: the connection between your headline and search intent, and why clarity builds trust fa