Why your homepage keeps getting rewritten (and how to stop it)

I see this a lot. A startup launches a website, and within a few months someone wants to change the headline. Then an investor suggests a different angle. Then a new hire rewrites the services page. A year later the site has been redone three times and still doesn’t quite say what the business does.

Usually the copy isn’t the problem. The decision underneath it was never made.

Positioning is a decision, not a sentence

Good positioning answers a few plain questions: who is this for, what problem does it solve for them, what else could they choose instead, and why should they pick you. Once those answers are agreed, the headline almost writes itself. Until they are, every opinion about the homepage is really an opinion about strategy.

Signs the positioning isn’t settled

• Your team describes the business in noticeably different ways.

• The website, the pitch deck and your LinkedIn all lead with different things.

• Sales calls spend the first ten minutes explaining what you actually do.

• Feedback on copy is about taste (“it doesn’t feel right”) rather than facts.

How to settle it

Start with the people who buy. Talk to a handful of customers, or people who nearly became customers, and listen to how they describe the problem in their own words. Look at the alternatives they considered, including doing nothing. Then write down, in plain language, who you’re for and why you’re the better choice for them.

Get the founders and leadership to agree it, in writing. That document becomes the reference point. When someone wants to change the homepage, the question becomes “does this match what we agreed?” rather than “do I like it?”.

Then build the website

With the positioning agreed, the website, the deck and your outreach can all say the same thing. The site gets shorter, the copy gets clearer and, most importantly, it stops getting rewritten every quarter.

This is exactly what our Positioning Sprint does in two weeks, and it’s the first month of every Founding Partner engagement. If your homepage is on its third rewrite, it might be worth a conversation.

Common questions