There’s no quicker way to turn off a potential buyer than to confuse them.

I recently heard about a new tech software on a podcast and I decided to look them up. I landed on their website and it was a pretty standard tech website. Some nice colors, a big header banner, and some fancy branding that I liked.

But I struggled to understand what they did. I had some understanding from hearing about it on the podcast, but it wasn’t clear from the website alone.

I scrolled down to see a section with vague explanations about the company. I immediately scrolled back up and clicked on “services” to find a long list. I clicked on industries and found another long list.

In a matter of seconds, my mind immediately thinks “What is this product? What problem do they solve? Is it applicable to me or not?”

It took me a few minutes and a lot of focus to figure out, which is far too long for the average buyer. Can you imagine how many buyers land on their site and just give up?

I’m seeing this more and more - confusing websites with vague messaging that doesn’t speak straight forward to buyers. And lately, I’ve noticed us marketers are making this mistake far too often.

We’ve become obsessed with trying to sound elegant, complex, and different. We write in unusual tones, write longer descriptions, and use industry terms that we hardly understand ourselves.

We think the more cool words we use and more sophisticated we sound, the better we appear to buyers. But we don’t appear better. We just confuse the hell out of them.

Your product is complex, your company is solving an important problem, and you want to be seen as experts. That’s great. But there’s a human on the other end of that screen. And your job is to speak to them as directly as possible.

These humans have short attention spans. They want answers quickly and don’t want to take extra time to figure out what you’re saying. They may be educated. They may like reading. They may know a lot about your product. But you still need to keep it simple.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a big company or a mom and pop shop. It doesn’t matter if you sell B2B or B2C. Simplicity always works.

Today we consume more content, advertisements, videos, and marketing than we ever have. There’s no time to waste in your messaging. You have mere seconds to grab people’s attention and get them hooked. The more complex you sound, the harder that is to do.

Each word must earn its space on the page. Each sentence should be analyzed to ensure it adds value. If not, get rid of it. Stop using words people don’t understand. Stop adding extra sentences to a landing page that serve no purpose.

The best marketers of all time knew this. The best B2C brands especially know this. Look at old ads from famous brands. They were immensely creative, but what do they have in common? They were simple and easy to understand. They spoke directly to their target audience. No one was confused.

Simplify everything. Cut down the words. Remove jargon. Make a constant effort to write directly and simply. If you confuse people in marketing, you are going to lose them. If you lose them early on, you can’t sell them anything.