Most landing page copy fails for a predictable reason: it was written to impress rather than to convert. Long sentences. Jargon-heavy value propositions. Dense paragraphs with no visual relief. Visitors hit the page, can't quickly parse what you do or why it matters, and leave — often within the first ten seconds.
Our readability analyzer evaluates your page copy the way a conversion specialist would: not just for grade level, but for scannability, cognitive load, and purchase-intent alignment. It extracts every text element — headlines, subheadings, body paragraphs, bullet points, CTAs — and measures each against benchmarks drawn from high-converting pages across industries.
What readability actually means for conversions
The research is consistent: landing pages written at a 6th–8th grade reading level convert better than those written at a college level — even when the audience is highly educated. This isn't about dumbing down your content. It's about removing the processing friction that stands between a visitor's attention and your call to action. Short sentences reduce cognitive load. Active voice creates momentum. White space guides the eye.
The analyzer checks five dimensions that directly affect conversion:
- Reading level — Flesch-Kincaid grade level and ease score for body copy and headlines separately.
- Sentence length distribution — Average words per sentence, plus the percentage of sentences exceeding 25 words (where comprehension drops sharply).
- Paragraph density — Whether copy is broken into scannable chunks or presented as walls of text that visitors skip.
- Passive voice frequency — Passive constructions reduce specificity and urgency in conversion copy.
- Scannability score — How well headings, bullets, and bold text let visitors extract your core message without reading every word.
How this differs from standard readability tools
Tools like Hemingway App measure readability in isolation. Our analyzer evaluates readability in the context of conversion. A high grade-level score on a technical SaaS page may be acceptable if the audience expects depth. The same score on a direct-response sales page is almost certainly hurting your conversions. Context is everything — and that context comes from pairing readability data with the full copy analysis and CRO audit roast.page produces for every URL.
Pair this tool with the headline analyzer to identify whether your clarity problems are concentrated in your most-read copy, or distributed throughout the page.