The Four Questions
Give someone ten seconds with your website.
Can they answer these?
A website can look finished and still fail to explain the business. Most sites answer these questions eventually. Visitors shouldn’t have to investigate your business to understand it.
AI can produce a convincing interface quickly. It still needs a clear offer underneath it.
If the answers aren’t clear, another animation probably isn’t what you’re missing.
What do you do?
This is asking what somebody can get from you. A product, a service, a tool, your expertise? Name the thing before you try to make it sound interesting.
A slogan can set a tone. It can also leave someone with no idea what you sell.
- Hard to picture
- “We create innovative digital experiences.”
- Clearer
- “We design and build websites for home-service companies.”
The second names the work and the customer. Someone outside the industry can picture what they would be buying. The first could describe a website, a video game, or an advertising installation.
Read your opening sentence to someone who doesn’t know your business. Can they describe the offer back to you without borrowing your words?
If someone understands your tagline but still doesn’t know what you sell, the tagline isn’t doing enough.
Who is it for?
A visitor needs enough context to recognize themselves. That might be a type of company, a job they’re responsible for, or a situation they’re trying to get out of.
“For small teams managing their first client projects” tells me more than “for ambitious businesses.” It describes a situation, not a flattering label.
Who is it not for?
A useful boundary helps both sides. If your service needs an existing product, say so. If your tool is built for one person rather than a procurement department, make that visible.
You don’t need to make your market artificially smaller. You do need to explain what makes someone a good fit. Trying to sound relevant to everyone can remove the details that would matter to your actual customer.
“Everyone” usually isn’t an audience. It’s an unanswered question.
What problem do you solve?
Start with the day before somebody finds you. What takes too long? What keeps getting misunderstood? Where do money, attention, or confidence disappear?
- Feature
- “Automated reporting.”
- The problem behind it
- “Your team spends every Monday rebuilding the same report by hand.”
Now the feature has a job. The visitor can recognize the repeated work and decide whether it is worth fixing. Then you can explain how the reporting works and what it actually changes.
Look for the specific friction: something slow, expensive, confusing, frustrating, or risky. Describe the change you can support, rather than promising an effortless future.
Features tell people what exists. Problems tell them why it matters.
Why should somebody choose you?
This is the harder one. The alternative might be a competitor. It might also be a spreadsheet, doing the work themselves, or deciding that the problem can wait.
“Quality service,” “customer focused,” “innovative solutions,” “trusted partner,” “industry leading,” and “exceptional experience” are easy to write. Nearly anyone can use them. They don’t explain the choice.
What can you say that your competitors cannot honestly copy?
Look for something concrete: a piece of work people can inspect, relevant experience you can describe, a constraint you handle well, or a way of working you can demonstrate. A difference becomes useful when the customer can see why it matters to their situation.
You don’t need to claim that nobody else can do the job. You need to give someone a specific, honest reason to consider you, with evidence close enough to check.
Try removing your name from the paragraph. Could any business in your category publish it unchanged? If so, the paragraph needs more of the actual work.
A claim isn’t differentiation just because it’s written in a larger font.
4 + 1 / Understanding → action
And then one more thing.
What should they do next?
Once someone understands the offer, the fit, the problem, and the reason to choose you, give them somewhere useful to go.
Buy. Book. Call. Try. Compare. Read. Download. Request a quote. View the work. Choose the action that fits the decision they’re ready to make, and say what happens when they take it.
A vague “Learn more” can leave all the work with the visitor. “See how the installation works” tells them what is on the other side.
Understand these four.
Then make the next step obvious.
Two questions underneath the four
Why now?
What happens if the customer waits? Sometimes a deadline, recurring cost, or growing problem makes the timing clear. Sometimes there is no rush.
Explain the real cost of doing nothing if you can support it. Don’t invent urgency to fill a gap in the offer. A countdown timer cannot make a vague problem more important.
Can you prove it?
Put evidence where the claim is made. That might be public work, a demonstration, a screenshot, a case study, or a customer’s account of what happened. Numbers need context and dates. Before-and-after examples need to show what actually changed.
Saying you’re good is marketing. Showing the work gives someone a way to judge.
Read the Product Audit Field Guide: looking finished versus being finished
Check whether search engines can reach and understand the page
The 10-second test
Open your homepage. Pretend you’ve never seen the company before. Give yourself ten seconds.
- What is this?
- Is it for me?
- What does it help me do?
- Why would I choose or trust it?
- What am I supposed to do next?
If the answers require opening the About page, decoding buzzwords, already knowing the industry, or reading three screens of copy, there is probably work to do.
Knowing your own business makes this harder to judge. Ask someone unfamiliar with it to try, too.
So what about this site?
- What do you do?
- I design, build, test, and improve websites and digital products, usually with AI somewhere in the process.
- Who is it for?
- Founders and small teams who need a clearer, more useful website or product. The Journal is also for builders, designers, and developers working through those decisions themselves.
- What problem do you solve?
- AI makes it easy to build something that looks finished. I work on what makes it understandable, usable, discoverable, and ready to use beyond the demo.
- Why should somebody choose you?
- I’m building this stuff myself. I find what breaks, fix it, and document what I learn. You can inspect the public work and read the reasoning before deciding whether that approach fits your project.
What should you do next?
If you’re working through a problem yourself, start with a guide. If you’re deciding whether to work with me, look at the work and send a brief.