Page structure and headings

What page structure and headings work is

This is the reordering of a page you already have. The sentences stay, very nearly all of them. What changes is the sequence they appear in, the headings above them, and the size of the blocks they sit in. The answer a reader came for moves to the top, and the qualifications, conditions and background that used to precede it move below.

It is not a page rewrite, which replaces the words and usually the argument as well. It is not readability improvement either, which works at the level of the sentence and leaves the running order alone. This works one level up. Think of it as moving the furniture rather than replacing it.

When you need one

You need this when the page contains everything a buyer needs and delivers it in the wrong sequence. The test is simple: read only the headings, in order, and see whether they tell the story. On most business pages they do not, because they were written to sound interesting rather than to say what follows.

The second sign is a page that opens with context. Company background, a paragraph on standards, a definition of the category. All of it may be true and none of it is what the reader arrived for. The answer is on the third screen and most people never reach it.

You do not need this if the page says the wrong things in the first place, or addresses someone you do not sell to. Reordering weak material produces well-ordered weak material, and the rewrite is the better purchase. You also do not need it if the page is short and already answers in its first paragraph; then the problem is elsewhere, and a content audit will say where.

What gets changed

• The first screen. The plain answer, in one or two sentences, before any qualification. If the honest answer is “it depends”, then the first screen says what it depends on, which is still an answer.
• The order of the sections. Rearranged to match the order a buyer asks in: what is it, is it for me, what does it cost, what happens if it goes wrong, how do I start. Background and history move to the end or out.
• The headings. Every one rewritten to describe what sits underneath it. Clever headings, one-word headings and headings that are really slogans are replaced with sentences a scanner can use as a map.
• The blocks. Paragraphs of eleven lines split. Lists that are genuinely lists made into lists. Tables where the page compares things and currently does it in prose.
• What moves out. A short list of anything reordered off the page entirely, usually because it belongs on a different page rather than because it is wrong.

What you get

The reordered page. One editable document with the new heading set and the existing text arranged under it. Moved passages are marked as moved so you can see that they were not quietly rewritten.

The heading map. The old headings and the new ones side by side, with a line on each saying what the new heading promises and why the old one did not. This is the part your own writers reuse on the next page.

The new opening. The one place where new words are usually needed, because the answer was previously spread across three paragraphs and now has to be stated once, at the top, in your own vocabulary.

A worked example

An illustration. A Victoria company that installs residential lifts has a page of about eleven hundred words called “Home elevators”. It opens with the founding of the business, moves to a section on the standards the equipment is built to, then a paragraph on the range of finishes, and reaches the two questions every caller asks — how much room it needs and whether the house requires a pit dug under it — near the bottom. The headings read “Our story”, “Built to last”, “Choices” and “Get in touch”.

After reordering, the first screen answers the space question in two sentences and says plainly that most installations in older houses need a shallow pit and that a site visit settles it. The standards section survives, moved below, under a heading saying which standard and what it means for a buyer. Finishes become a short list rather than a paragraph. The founding of the business drops to three lines at the foot, beside the fact that the same two installers have done every job since. The headings now read “How much room a home lift needs”, “Whether your house needs a pit”, “What the installation involves” and “Booking a site visit”. Roughly ninety words are new. The rest is the company's own text, reordered.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which page, what a reader most often arrives wanting to know, and which questions your phone answers over and over. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per page, or per set of pages that share a shape, agreed before anything starts.
3. The material. The current page, and anything that tells you what readers ask: sales notes, your inbox, the questions that arrive after someone buys.
4. The work. Two to three working days for a single page. A set of five service pages sharing one structure runs over a week to ten days, since the shape is decided once and applied five times.
5. Delivery. The reordered document and the heading map, with one round of changes after you have read it.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the size depends on how much of the page turns out to be reusable. A page whose material is sound and simply out of sequence is a short job. A page where half the sections have no home in the new order is close to a rewrite, and I will say so and quote it as one rather than charge you twice. The pricing page sets out the four ways of working. The number is agreed in writing before the work starts.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. If the reordering turned up questions the page cannot answer without doubling in length, those answers become a page of real questions answered in full. If the new structure works and the other pages on the site still do not share it, applying the same heading pattern across them is the obvious next purchase, and cheaper each time. And if the reordered page now reads as though two people wrote it, an alignment pass settles that. None of it is assumed. Reordering one page is a complete piece of work, and a page that answers first is finished whether or not anything else happens.