Checklist and fixes

You now have a draft: one offer, a person, one next step, and one piece of proof. The remaining work is to compare that draft with the page a stranger actually sees, and to fix the gaps in an order that matters. Do not start by picking new colours or adding sections. Words and the next step come first. Decoration on an unclear page makes a prettier muddle.

Run the checklist on the live page

Open the homepage clarity checklist. It is ten checks in three groups: the offer, the phone, and the next step. Ticks stay on your device. Nothing is sent to us. You can use it on its own, but it is sharper after the earlier lessons, because you know what “one main thing” and “one next step” are asking for.

Keep your real homepage open on your phone and switch between the two. Tick a line only when it is already true of the live page, not of the draft in your notes. The draft is where you are going. The checklist is what a visitor gets today. If you only have a document, run the checks against that document as if it were the first screen.

Fix the gaps in this order

1. The offer. If a stranger still cannot say what you do, rewrite the first screen before you touch anything else. Lessons one and two. Nothing lower down will compensate.
2. Who it is for. Name them, and name a limit. Lesson three.
3. One next step. One label, repeated, easy to tap, and the tap does what it says. Lesson four.
4. Proof. One honest block. Lesson five. Leave this until the three lines above are true. Proof attached to an unclear offer still leaves people unsure.
5. Phone practicalities. Type you can read without pinching, buttons a thumb can hit, and a page that opens without a long wait. These are the phone group on the checklist.

Work one gap at a time. A list of ten edits done badly is how homepages become muddled again. Finish the first unticked item, look at the phone, then tick the checklist again.

When a refresh or a new build is the better path

The fifth group is different from the others. If the sentences are right and the page still fights the phone — type locked at a tiny size, the offer trapped under an image, a template you are not allowed to change — you are no longer looking at a copy problem. Clearer sentences that nobody can see are not a fix.

• You cannot edit the first screen. The tool or the template will not let the words sit where they need to sit.
• The page is so slow, or so cramped, that a better sentence will not be seen.
• You would rather the studio did the rewrite and the build than spend another month inside a tool you dislike.

That work is a commission, separate from this course. A site refresh keeps the address people already know and replaces the muddle. A new small site is the right path when the current one cannot be saved, or when the draft has nowhere to live. Both are on the hire page. If you can edit the page, do the words first. A new site that repeats the same five offers is an expensive way to stay unclear.

To draft on paper first, use the offer and next-step worksheet. The lesson summary puts the six lessons and this fix order on one sheet.