The small words on your website are doing the selling.

Look at the last website your company approved. Someone read the homepage headline aloud in a meeting. Someone argued about the About page. Nobody, at any point, discussed the words on the buttons, the message that appears when a form goes wrong, or the page a customer sees when their cart is empty. Those got written by whoever was building the site, on the day they built it, in the words their software suggested.

They are also the words read at the exact moment a visitor decides something. A headline is read by someone browsing. A button is read by someone about to act.

Buttons say what happens next

“Submit.” “Click here.” “Learn more.” “Get started.” Each of these is a button that tells the reader nothing about what it does. Submit what, to whom? Get started on what, and will it ask for my card?

A good button finishes the sentence “I want to...” in the reader's words. “Book a cleaning.” “Get the price list.” “Send my details.” “Call the clinic.” The test is simple: read the button alone, with the rest of the page covered. If someone could tell you what will happen when they press it, it works.

Our own contact form ends with a button that says “Send on WhatsApp”, and next to it, “Send by email instead”. That is two buttons telling you exactly where your message is going. It also tells the person who would rather not use WhatsApp that they don't have to, before they leave to find our email address.

• Start with a verb. The reader is about to do something; tell them what.
• Name the thing. “Download” is half a button. “Download the menu” is a whole one.
• Say the cost if there is one. “Pay ₹499” is clearer than “Proceed”, and nobody feels tricked afterwards.
• One main button per screen. Three equal buttons is a quiz.

Error messages are written to the wrong person

“Invalid input.” “Error 500.” “Oops, something went wrong.” The first two are written for the developer. The third is written for nobody, and its cheerful “oops” lands on a customer who has just lost the ten minutes they spent filling in a form.

A useful error message does three things: says what went wrong, in plain words, says how to fix it, and does not blame the reader. “Invalid phone number” becomes “That number looks short. Indian mobile numbers have 10 digits.” “Payment failed” becomes “Your bank didn't approve this payment. No money has left your account. Try again, or pay by UPI.”

An error message is read by someone who is already annoyed. Tell them what happened, what to do, and that the money is safe.

That last part matters more than it looks. A customer whose payment fails is not wondering about your server. They are wondering whether ₹2,300 just disappeared. Answer that first.

The empty page is an invitation

Every website and app has screens that are sometimes empty: the cart before anything is added, the order history of a new customer, the search that found nothing. Most of them say “No items found” and stop, which is the digital equivalent of a shopkeeper shrugging.

An empty state is the one moment you know exactly what the reader wants, because they just told you by arriving there. The empty cart can show this week's three most ordered things. The search that found nothing can say “Nothing for ‘steel almirah’. Try ‘cupboard’, or WhatsApp us and we'll check the godown.” The new customer's order page can say what their first order will look like, and where to start.

The page not found deserves the same care. Ours says “This page didn't survive the edit,” then offers two ways out: back to the homepage, or to the work. A joke is optional. The ways out are not.

The words around a form

Labels, hints and the line under the field are copy too. “Name” is fine. “Enter your full name as per PAN card” is better, if that is what you actually need, because it saves a rejected application a week later. Say why you want the phone number, and if you will call it. Say how long the form takes, if it is long. A reader who knows the form has six questions finishes it. A reader who doesn't scrolls, sees twenty fields and leaves.

The same goes for the message after the form is sent. “Thank you for your submission” is a receipt. “Got it. We'll reply on WhatsApp by tomorrow evening” is a promise, and the reader can stop wondering. Our piece on the Contact page covers the rest of that page.

Do this on your site this week

Open your website on your phone and try to break it. Press every button and write down what each one says. Fill the form with a wrong phone number and read the error. Search for something you don't sell. Add nothing to the cart and open it. Then rewrite each of those small lines so it says what happens next, in the reader's words. It is an afternoon of work, and it is the copy closest to the money. If your headline still needs the same treatment, start with the one job it has.