The Cost of And

Every extra service you list quietly lowers how believable all your other services look.

Chart: The Cost of And. Every extra service you list quietly lowers how believable all your other services look.
Save this chart Download

The mechanism

The chart is a single line sliding downhill as the number of services on your homepage grows from one to seven or more. At one service you're a specialist, seen as highly believable; by three you're a "boutique generalist" with credibility already cut in half; past four you slide into the "dilution zone" toward a generic, interchangeable floor. A marked hinge around three-to-four notes that each added "and" now costs more trust than it adds. Founders read "and" as growth; buyers read it as drift.

Part of Positioning. Who you are for and why you are the obvious choice.