3 Online Copywriting Rules for a Great Home Page
Of all the pages on your website, your Home Page is the most important.
However many companies fail to use this most valuable piece of real estate to the best advantage, turning thousands of visitors – and potential business away. This is particularly true of B2B websites, many of which tend to be product and company focused. It’s by no means just B2B though, plenty of B2C Home Pages fall waste their home page real estate as well.
Your Home Page copy can determine whether your visitors stay on your site or move off to visit another site. Here are 3 website copywriting rules for a great home page… a Home Page that converts.
1. Make your website Home Page for and about your visitors
Your website home page should be all about your visitors and what they need and want. It isn’t the place to talk about you your company mission or how great you are. Confine that to elsewhere on your site, because your mission or what you strive to become is really of little importance to your visitors. Getting solutions to their problems is what’s on their mind and that’s what you should focus on if you want to keep them.
Your Home Page is where people come when they are looking for information, help, services or products. It’s where they come when they want answers to their pressing problems. Are you providing them with those answers? Or does your Home Page fall into the boring and less-than-useful “Me Too” bucket, where it’s “all about you?” (Hint – long flash presentations though “cool”, with hard to find “skip” buttons are also self-serving, a waste of time… and unhelpful to task-focused visitors). Where is the benefit of waiting a minute or more to watch a flash presentation slowly load only to then be permitted to “enter site?” That’s right, there’s no benefit.
Make sure you provide your visitors with answers by focusing your home page content on the key questions to which people want answers.
2. Focus your website headline on your visitors
Most company website Home Page headlines (where they exist, that is) focus almost entirely on the company or their products. An example I recently came across was this one (I disguised the company name):
“ABC Software Solutions – Beyond BZM…” What?
First – the headline forces the visitor seeking answers to wonder.. “what software solutions? Are they what I need? Can they help me? Am I in the right place? Should I go somewhere else?”
Second – it uses acronyms which are never helpful when used in a headline unless you can guarantee everyone will know that they mean. In short, headline is focused on the company and “solutions” not on the answers the visitor needs.
Don’t make it hard for your visitors to understand within minutes what your website will do for them – and whether they should waste their time there. The fact is web visitors are task-oriented and impatient. Your headline has to grab their attention quickly and it has to tell them what benefits you offer them in a few seconds.
Re-focus your Home Page headline by first of all:
- researching your target audience
- discovering who uses your site and how often
- finding out what keywords they use to find your site
- finding out which pages they go to and
- understanding what they are looking for
Tip – You can find out most of this information by reviewing your website analytics program, using a keyword tracking tool and asking your visitors.
Then write your headline using keywords and including the biggest benefit or promise for your visitors. When you do this you’re far more likely to focus on answering some of the questions your visitor has.
3. Write your website Home Page for first time visitors
Many websites are written assuming every visitor is immediately familiar with the content. The truth is, many visitors may never have been to your site before and even if you’re a well known brand you should still assume first time visitors will not know instinctively where everything is. If you want to capture these potential leads you need to make your content “first-time visitor friendly”. From the navigation to the actual content.
If you sell products for example, use categories that are helpful to your visitors to make their search easier. If you sell services, the same applies. Make it as easy as possible… websites are rarely simple to the visitor.
Don’t use company focused industry or “departmental” categories or jargon. While they may make sense to you, they will mean nothing to your visitors. Always use categories that help your visitors find what they are looking for especially when your website is several pages deep. Break categories into smaller, narrower ones if this will help your visitors, rather than forcing them to trawl through large overwhelming categories.
Writing an effective Home Page (i.e. one that coverts visitors into leads, buyers or subscribers) is more than simply throwing copy on the page. It takes an understanding of how each page relates to the other on the website, understanding who your visitors are and what problems they want answering, plus a strategic approach to content creation.
It can be hard for a company to be completely objective and “see themselves from their visitor’s point of view.” But there’s no need for a company to try and figure it out on their own. All they really need do is hire an online copywriter, who understands the power of optimized website Home Pages… and how to create them.
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I write web sites. I write web sites. I write web sites. Did you get that? Sigh; the point here is what you and I know the client does not. My repetition is akin to how many times I rewrite sites! Public relations and marketing are about education; if we can get clients to uphold your sound advice, we’re rockin’. Thanks for sharing!