Nobody ever left a website because the words were too easy to understand. They leave because the words were too hard — a wall of long sentences, jargon and corporate filler that takes effort to decode. Visitors don’t make that effort. They go back to Google and click your competitor.
The good news: readability is measurable, and fixing it is one of the cheapest wins in marketing. Here’s what “reading age” means, six rules for writing plain English, and a free tool that scores your copy in seconds.
What reading age actually means
Reading age is the age of the reader who would understand your text comfortably. It’s derived from the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which looks at two things: how long your sentences are, and how long your words are. Short sentences plus short words equals a low reading age. Long sentences plus long words equals a high one.
A reading age of 9 doesn’t mean your writing is childish — it means almost every adult can read it quickly and without effort. That’s exactly what you want on a website, where people skim. A reading age of 16 means you’re writing for university graduates. Fine for an academic journal; fatal for a plumber’s homepage.
Most small-business websites we see land somewhere between 13 and 17 without their owners realising. They didn’t choose that level. It just happened, one long sentence at a time.
Why hard-to-read copy costs you customers
1. People don’t read — they scan
On a screen, visitors skim headings and first lines, hunting for the bit that answers their question. Dense paragraphs with 30-word sentences are invisible to skimmers. Short sentences and plain words survive the scan.
2. Confusion kills trust
If a visitor has to re-read a sentence to understand your services, a small doubt creeps in: “If their website is this hard to follow, what will working with them be like?” Clear writing signals a business that’s easy to deal with.
3. Mobile makes it worse
So many website visits happen on phones — small screens, on the move, full of distractions. Copy that was merely heavy on a desktop becomes unreadable on a phone. Short is not just nice — it’s necessary.
4. Google prefers clear answers
Search engines are built to match questions with clear answers. Pages that explain things plainly tend to earn the featured snippets and the clicks. Readable copy is good SEO without any tricks.
Six rules for plain English that still sounds professional
1. Keep sentences under 20 words
This single change does more than everything else combined. If a sentence runs past 20 words, split it. Your readers will thank you by staying on the page.
2. Swap long words for short ones
“Utilise” → “use”. “Approximately” → “about”. “Facilitate” → “help”. “In order to” → “to”. Nobody ever chose a supplier because their website said “utilise”. Short words aren’t dumbing down — they’re speeding up.
3. Kill the filler phrases
“Due to the fact that” is just “because” wearing a suit. “At this point in time” is “now”. “A large number of” is “many”. Cut them and your sentences get shorter without losing a single fact.
4. Use the active voice
“The project was completed by our team” hides who did what. “We completed the project” says it straight. Active voice is shorter, clearer and more confident — exactly how you want your business to sound.
5. One idea per sentence
When a sentence tries to do three jobs — explain the service, mention the guarantee and add the call to action — it does none of them well. Give each idea its own sentence. White space is free.
6. Read it out loud
The oldest editing trick there is. If you stumble reading a sentence aloud, your visitors will stumble reading it silently. Rewrite until it flows.
Check your copy in 30 seconds
Rules are easier to follow when you can see the result. Our free checker gives your text a reading age, a Flesch score out of 100, five more readability formulas, and a concrete fix list: your longest sentences flagged, long words paired with simpler swaps, wordy phrases tightened, and passive voice highlighted. Paste your homepage copy, check the score, rewrite, and check again. Aim for reading age 9–12 for a general audience. No account, nothing to install, and your text never leaves your browser.
FAQs
What reading age should my website be?
For a general audience, 9–12. That’s the level most adults read quickly and comfortably on a screen. Specialist audiences — engineers, medics, lawyers — can handle higher, but make it a deliberate choice for the right pages, not an accident across the whole site.
Will plain English make my business look less expert?
No. Explaining things simply is the mark of someone who truly understands their subject. Jargon is often a hiding place; clarity is a selling point. Your expertise shows in what you know, not in how many syllables you use.
Are readability scores exact?
They’re well-established estimates, not exact science. The formulas behind them have been used by publishers and governments for decades. Treat them as a compass: the direction (simpler, shorter, clearer) matters more than any single number.
How is this different from a grammar checker?
Grammar checkers fix mistakes. A readability checker fixes difficulty — sentences that are grammatically perfect but exhausting to read. You need both, but difficulty is the one most businesses never check.
Your website’s words are doing a sales job every hour of every day. Make them easy to read and they sell harder. Run your homepage through the free checker today — and fix the reading age before your competitors’ plain English does the persuading for you.
Want your whole website’s copy reviewed properly? Book a free 15-minute consultation — we’ll find everything that’s holding your words back and tell you exactly how to fix it, in plain English.
