“Best in class” means nothing. Numbers do.
“Best in the world” gets ignored. “Cuts load time by 1.8 seconds” gets believed.
“Blazing fast.” “World-class support.” “The best tool for teams.” Every competitor says it, so your reader’s brain files it under background noise.
Claude Hopkins made this case in Scientific Advertising back in 1923. Lines like “Best in the world” are just “claiming the expected,” he wrote, and superlatives make readers discount everything else you say. Specific facts, on the other hand, get their full weight. His example: a dealer announcing that prices were reduced makes little impression, while prices reduced 25 percent gets noticed. He also tells of a razor maker who advertised a 78-second shave instead of a quick one, and saw sales jump right away.
Go through your page and circle every adjective. Replace each one with a number, a time, a count or a named detail. Only use numbers you can prove. A specific lie is still a lie, just a more memorable one.
The example
- Instead of
- “Lightning-fast uptime monitoring with world-class alerting”
- Try
- “Checks your site every 30 seconds and texts you within a minute of downtime”
Before you flush
Circle every adjective on your homepage and replace three of them with a real number, time or count you can back up.