The situation
The proposed website felt more authoritative than the old version, but there was a real concern it had become too institutional and had lost some of the commercial energy that had originally driven growth. At the same time, a new high-value certification product needed to appeal to senior enterprise buyers (think CIOs and IT leadership) rather than just the individual practitioners the organisation had always served.
Two audiences, two very different sets of motivations, one website trying to serve both at once.
What I did
Started with positioning, not copy
Rather than edit paragraphs, I first worked out what the organisation was becoming. The real story wasn't "we're offering better training." It was something closer to an organisation that sets standards, publishes research and shapes an industry. This meant the site needed to sound like an institution, not a training company, without losing the human energy that had built the brand in the first place.
Defined the audience before writing
One homepage was trying to serve multiple completely different buyers. I split them into two clear audiences with genuinely different motivations:
- Executive buyers — worried about organisational risk, board scrutiny, governance, resilience and investment
- Practitioners — worried about doing the job well, improving capability and becoming better at their craft
Once those motivations were explicit, every section on the page had a clear job to do.
Reintroduced the problem before the solution
The proposed copy jumped quite quickly into the solution. I suggested adding a dedicated section reminding visitors why they were there before introducing the organisation — not generic pain points, but the actual commercial pressures facing each audience. For executives that meant operational risk, regulatory exposure and reputational damage. For practitioners it meant inconsistent processes, pressure during high-stakes moments and capability gaps. The homepage became less about "who we are" and more about "why this matters."
Balanced authority with humanity
The proposed direction had deliberately moved away from marketing language, which was the right strategic move. But it had overcorrected. Rather than making the copy louder again, I made it more human.
Authority shouldn't come from sounding formal. It should come from having something worth saying.
That principle became part of the wider editorial approach — teach rather than tell, reduce complexity, challenge respectfully, let expertise demonstrate authority rather than claim it.
Made every section earn its place
Rather than reviewing paragraphs individually, I looked at what each section was responsible for — the hero establishing who the page was for, a dedicated section surfacing the commercial stakes, a credibility section building institutional trust, and so on. That turned the page into a narrative rather than a collection of content blocks.
What changed
The work shifted the pages from describing services to selling a point of view. The messaging became audience-first rather than organisation-first, problem-led before solution-led, evidence-led rather than adjective-led, and commercially persuasive without feeling salesy.
The scope also expanded. What started as page editing grew into messaging, audience definition and tone of voice work, because it became clear those foundations needed agreeing before individual pages could be rewritten with any confidence.