Morphos / Journal
Fewer pages, written properly
Most firms add pages when the problem is that no existing page says anything.
A firm with eight partners usually arrives wanting a page per partner, a page per service and a page per sector. The result is a site that is easy to navigate and impossible to remember, because every page is a short version of the same paragraph.
The symptom
Read any three pages of a typical firm site aloud. If they could be swapped without anyone noticing, the pages are not doing work. That is not a design failure — it is a writing failure that the design then makes visible.
What a page has to do to earn its place
- Answer a question nobody else on the site answers — how a matter is priced, what happens in the first two weeks, who actually does the work.
- Name something specific — a sector, a type of matter, a jurisdiction, a typical client size. Specificity is what makes a page findable and quotable.
- Be written for someone who does not know the firm — internal shorthand is the most common reason a page reads as empty to a stranger.
The usual page count against the useful one
| Usual | Useful | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A page per partner | One page, with the people on it | Clients choose a firm, then ask who. Rarely the reverse. |
| A page per service | Three pages, grouped by the decision | Nobody shops for "corporate" in the abstract. |
| A page per sector | Sector content inside the service pages | A sector page with no depth is a duplicate. |
| "About us" | "How we work" | One is an autobiography; the other answers a buying question. |
The uncomfortable implication
Cutting eight pages is harder than writing them, because each one was somebody's idea. The useful question per page is not "is this true?" — it is "would a client make a different decision after reading it?" If not, the page is a liability: it dilutes the pages that would.
What a page has to earn
A page earns its place by being the answer to a question somebody actually asks. Not a keyword, not a menu item, not a section somebody felt should exist — a question.
Applied honestly, that test removes a lot. The 'About our team' page that repeats the homepage. The 'Services' page that lists four things already described elsewhere. The 'Gallery' that duplicates the photography on every other page. Each of them was added because a site was expected to have it.
What remains is smaller and stronger: a homepage that states the claim, a page per service that answers the question in full, a page per sector if the sectors genuinely differ, proof, and a way to make contact. Five pages, each pulling its weight, will outrank and outconvert fifteen that split the same content between them.