Say what is true, and be able to show it

The two rules under everything

First, a claim must not be misleading. That includes true statements arranged so a reasonable person takes away something false.

Second, you need a reasonable basis for the claim before you make it. Not a plan to find one if challenged. Evidence in hand, at the moment of publishing.

Almost every advertising rule anywhere is a more detailed version of those two. If you hold to them, the detail rarely catches you out.

Where small business sites slip

Numbers invented for rhythm. Twenty five years of experience when it is nineteen. Hundreds of happy customers when nobody counted.

Superlatives with nothing behind them. The best in the county. The fastest response in the state. Those are claims, not decoration, and they invite somebody to test them.

Borrowed copy is the quiet one. Text lifted from a competitor carries their claims, their credentials and sometimes their licence numbers.

Round numbers are the tell. Hundreds of happy customers, thousands of jobs, twenty five years — each is a figure chosen because it sounded right rather than because somebody counted.

Results and outcomes

Anything promising a result is the highest risk sentence on a website. Cut your bills in half. Double your enquiries. Rank at the top.

If a result depends on the customer's own circumstances, it is not something you control, and stating it as an outcome is the claim that gets challenged.

Describe what you do instead. We replace the seals and test the pressure is checkable. Your heating bill will drop is not.

The test is whether the result depends on the customer. Anything that does is outside your control, and stating it as a promise is the sentence that gets challenged first.

The part you must not bury

If a condition would change somebody's mind, it belongs where the decision is made. Not in a footnote, not in the terms, not in small grey type.

A price that excludes parts. A service that covers only certain suburbs. A quote valid for a week. A rate that applies to the first visit only.

Disclosing it prominently is both the rule and the practical choice, because the alternative is a customer who feels tricked at the invoice.

Where the condition belongs is beside the decision, not in the terms, which is the pattern set out in deceptive design patterns.

Keeping the evidence

Start a simple file. For each claim on the site, one line saying what supports it and where that lives.

Licence numbers with expiry dates. The count behind any figure. Permission for every testimonial. The job record behind every photo pair.

It takes an afternoon and it converts your website from a set of assertions into a set of statements you can stand behind.

• Licence numbers, with the expiry date beside each
• The count behind any figure you publish
• Written permission for every testimonial
• The job record behind every photograph pair
• Insurance cover, with what it actually covers
• The source of any statistic you quote
• The date you last checked all of the above

What our own gate does about it

The builder refuses several shapes of claim outright. Promises of a ranking or a result. Certification language nobody can support. Phrases implying approval by a search engine.

Every page passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards, and the in-app assistant explains why a refused sentence was refused.

What no machine can judge is whether your twenty five years is actually twenty five. That one is yours.

The posture that ages well

Specific and modest beats vague and grand. Two hundred kitchens fitted in this county since we started is better than the region's leading fitter, and it is provable.

It also reads as more confident, because only somebody counting would say it.

Nothing here is legal advice, and your own trade may have rules that sit above all of this. The habit of being able to show your working survives every one of them.

It also survives growth. A specific, counted claim can be updated when the number changes; a superlative has to be defended every time somebody new enters your market.