What the Headline Scorer checks
The Headline Scorer takes a single headline and marks it against the features that tend to separate a headline someone reads from one they skip past: length, specificity, and whether it points to a benefit (what the reader gets). It does not know your market or your customer. It works from the words on the page, so it flags patterns that hold across most commercial headlines.
That is worth spelling out because a score is easy to read as a mark out of ten for the whole headline, when it is closer to a checklist result. A headline can score well on the criteria the tool checks and still be wrong for the brief, because it is aimed at the wrong reader or makes a claim the business cannot support. The score tells you whether the mechanics are doing their job. It does not tell you whether the claim is true, or whether your reader cares about it.
The mechanics it looks for
A headline's job, in the oldest model of an advert's structure (AIDA, or Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), is the first letter: get attention. Everything the scorer checks feeds into that one job.
- Length. Headlines that run long lose the reader before the point arrives, particularly above the fold, the part of a page visible before anyone scrolls, where a reader decides in seconds whether to stay.
- Specificity. A number, a named outcome, or a concrete noun gives the reader something to picture. A vague claim gives them nothing to hold on to.
- Benefit versus feature. A feature describes the product; a benefit describes what changes for the reader. "Cloud-based accounting software" is a feature. "See your cash flow three months ahead" is a benefit.
- Weak openings and filler words. Words that add length without adding meaning, such as "very" or "really", or an opening clause that delays the point.
- Power words used without support. A power word is a word chosen for its emotional charge, such as "powerful", "revolutionary" or "proven". These are not banned; they are marked down when nothing in the headline backs them up.
A worked example
Take a brief for a UK accounting software product aimed at small-business owners. A first attempt: "Powerful accounting software for your business." Six words, and every one of them could sit on any accounting product in the market. "Powerful" is a power word doing no work, because nothing in the sentence says what the software is powerful at. The reader learns the category and nothing else.
A revised version: "See your cash flow three months ahead, without a spreadsheet." Ten words, and each one earns its place. "See" names an action the reader takes. "Three months ahead" is specific. "Without a spreadsheet" names the alternative the reader is currently using and sets the product against it. The scorer marks this version higher because it replaces a feature claim with a benefit and a vague power word with a concrete outcome.
Fixing a headline the scorer marks down
When a headline scores poorly, the fix is usually one of three moves.
- Replace the power word with the specific thing it was standing in for. If the headline calls something "powerful", ask what it is powerful at, and write that instead.
- Turn the feature into a benefit by finishing the sentence "so that the reader can...". "Cloud-based" becomes "so that the reader can check figures from anywhere", which is closer to a headline than the feature was.
- Cut the opening clause if the sentence still makes sense without it. Most delay comes from a phrase like "When it comes to running your business", which can go entirely.
Run each version back through the tool as you change it. The comparison between the before and after score is more useful than either score alone, because it shows you which specific change moved the needle.
What the tool cannot judge
The scorer cannot tell you whether a claim is true, whether it is one your business can stand behind, or whether it will pass advertising rules if the headline runs as part of a paid advert. Those checks sit with you and, where the copy makes a claim that needs substantiating, with the CAP Code. It also cannot tell you whether your specific reader responds to a specific tone; a headline that scores well for a general audience can still miss a niche one the tool has no way of knowing about. Treat a low score as a prompt to look closer, and a high score as confirmation the mechanics are sound.
Where a headline sits in the page
A headline does one job on a page that has several others to do. Once it is scoring well, the paragraph or line beneath it (the body copy) needs to hold the interest the headline earned, and the call to action (CTA), the instruction that tells the reader what to do next, needs to follow through on the promise the headline made. The Headline Scorer covers the first of those three jobs. For the other two, the Understanding Call-to-Action Tester guide and the Understanding Readability and Clarity Checker guide cover what comes after the headline has done its work.