Cutting Website Copy Length: Why I Cut 35% in One Pass (Simply Explained)

A few weeks ago I was clicking through the pages of my DTC fashion brand, reading them like a stranger would. And I cringed.

The writing was padded. Soft. The actual point was buried under three sentences that all said the same thing in different ways.

So I cut about 35% of the words off those pages in a single pass. No fancy rewrite. Just deletion. Here's how, and why it matters for anyone selling anything online.

Why Web Pages Get Bloated

Two things pile up over time, and together they bury your message.

First, the AI. When you ask AI to write a page, it plays it safe. It hedges. It repeats the point a second way "just in case." It adds phrases like "in many cases" to cover itself. That's not a flaw, it's just doing what it was trained to do: leave nothing out.

But thoroughness on a sales page reads as insecurity.

Second, the human. Every time you revise a page, you add one more reassuring sentence because you're scared the reader won't get it. "Let me just clarify this." "Let me add a line about quality."

Each edit feels reasonable. None of them is wrong by itself. But stack a dozen of them on top of an AI draft that was already long, and you get bloat.

Here's the part that clicked for me: bloat isn't a writing problem. It's a pile-up problem. No single sentence ruined the page. The pile of them did.

The One Rule That Made It Work

I gave myself one job. Not "make it better." Just cut the word count by a third, without losing the meaning.

Why a third? No deep reason. And that's exactly why it works.

When you have to hit a number, every sentence has to defend itself. You stop asking "is this sentence fine?" because everything is fine. You start asking "does this sentence earn its spot?" Most don't.

"Make this page better" gives you nothing to act on. A number forces decisions. Every sentence either survives the cut or it gets deleted. That's the whole trick.

And it's repeatable. This isn't a flash of inspiration you get once. It's a process you can run on any page, any time.

The Five Things to Cut First

When I went page by page, the same five culprits showed up over and over. Learn to spot these and you can do this yourself today.

1. Saying the same thing three times. You say the product is reliable. Then you say customers trust it. Then you say it's built to last. That's one claim wearing three outfits. If deleting a sentence loses no new information, cut it.

2. Hedging words. "We believe." "Typically." "In many cases." These feel responsible. They actually weaken whatever they're attached to. "This saves you time" beats "we believe this typically saves you time." Every soft word is a place where you flinched.

3. Explaining what they already know. Telling a CEO what a balance sheet is. Telling a runner what a stride is. You're talking down to the exact person you're trying to convince. If they'd nod and think "yes, obviously," cut it.

4. Warm-up sentences. "In the world of modern commerce, businesses face many challenges." That's a throat-clear. The real opening is the sentence after it. Look at the first line of every section. If it's setup, delete it and start with line two.

5. Repeating the headline. The same idea in the headline, then the subhead, then the first line of the body. The reader got it the first time. Keep the strongest version, cut the rest.

That's it. The 35% I cut was almost entirely these five things. It was deletion, not clever writing.

Why Shorter Copy Actually Sells More

This isn't about looking neat. It's about how people read.

The person on your page is busy and skeptical. They've been burned before. They're scanning, not reading, looking for one reason to keep going. Every padded sentence is a place for them to bounce.

Long copy sounds insecure. It reads like a salesperson who won't stop talking because they don't trust that the first reason landed. Tight copy reads as confidence. It says: here's the thing, I don't need to oversell it.

But here's the honest limit. Shorter is not always better. You can cut too far, strip out a sentence that was actually doing a job, and leave people confused.

The goal is not the fewest words. The goal is the most meaning per word.

Which is why I didn't touch my blog articles. Not one of them.

On a blog post, length is the point. Someone landing on a 2,000-word article came looking for depth. A short answer would fail them. There, the move is the opposite of cutting: make sure every paragraph adds something new.

So here's the test I use on any page:

If cutting a sentence removes information, keep it. If cutting it only removes reassurance or repetition, cut it.

My marketing pages failed that test, so I trimmed them. My blog posts passed it, so I left them alone. Same test, opposite answers. That's the point.

Sound Smart, Read Simple

There's a second rule I run alongside the word-count cut. I call it sound smart, read simple.

Come across as the expert, but write so anyone can understand it on the first read. Those two things feel like opposites. They're not.

Big words and dense sentences don't make you sound smart. When a reader hits a complicated sentence, they don't think "this person is brilliant." They think "I have to slow down." And every time they slow down, you risk losing them.

The smartest people I know explain hard things simply. The insecure ones hide behind jargon. Your reader feels the difference, even if they can't name it.

So: short sentences. Common words over fancy ones. One idea per sentence. Understandable the first time, by someone reading on their phone between meetings.

Try It This Week

Here's something you can do today, no tools required.

Pick one marketing page. Not your homepage, not a blog post. An about page or a service page. Set a target to cut a third. Then go sentence by sentence and hunt for those five patterns.

You'll feel the page get sharper as you go. The message that was buried will surface. It's oddly satisfying once you start.

This is part of how I run an entire brand on AI systems. The AI handles the typing. A human decides what survives the cut. That judgment of what's information versus what's padding is not something you hand to software. It takes a person who knows the business.

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