Personal WebFit Trainer Tips for the Home Page
Less is More (except for money)
Creating a homepage for your website is hard work. I’m sure you sweated blood working with a writer or writing the copy yourself. There is just so much that you want to say about your product, service, and company. My advice — say way less.
A “Wall of Words” may be obscuring your message.
Too much text is (in my opinion) the #1 illness that website home pages suffer from.
Website visitors spend about 5 seconds sizing-up a home page. They just don’t have the time to search for you distint message (your offering) in your long prose. They’ve been trained by watching TV, looking at billboards, and flipping through the radio to get their message quick.
Instead of several paragraphs of text on your home page, think “3 to 5 word headings” accompanied with a sentence or two of description. Include a meaningful photo or graphic that amplifies the message. Visitors will scan your logo, headings, images and anything else interesting and come up with a full picture.
Here’s an example.
Take a look at the first three headings of a blog post I wrote: “Get WebFit with The 5 Second Home Page Test” (you might have just taken the test). Go ahead… click the link I just gave you and look around (but remember to hit the back button to come back to this article). If you just scanned the headings in the blog (listed again directly below) you’ll know exactly what the whole blog is all about and you just might read it. Had I presented it without the headings, odds are you mind would have said “Wall Of Words” and moved on:
Forget What Your Website Says…What Do Visitors Actually See?”
Let’s Find Out
The 5 Second (Five Question) Home Page Test
Think Of Your Home Page As A Gateway
Did you every go to one of those networking events and someone comes up to you and starts telling you in excruciating detail about what the do. I want to run for the hills. Then you escape (the metaphor here is “abandon the home page”) and someone else comes up to you and gently says, “Hi, I’m Marcy. I help people get fit, stay relaxed, and live longer. Tell me…how I can help you?” OMG! I want to find out more. This person is actually interested in my problem and I trust them. I want to find out more.
Start thinking of your home page as a gateway to other pages. You don’t have to sell’em right off the bat like that menace I met at the networking event. Just entice or entertain them a bit with your offering. Present your visitors links to other pages that offer details about you, your company, and your solution to their problem.
Get Webfit. Tips to Improve Your Home Page
Get Rid of the “All About Me” Babble
Don’t babble about yourself. Offer your website visitors answers to questions they might have about something going on in their lives right now. People really aren’t interested in you (unless you look like Channing Tatum or Charlize Theron), how long your company’s been in business, or that you create “innovative solutions that change the world”. What they’re interested in is that you have the ability to help them solve their problem.
Tell Stories
Help visitors learn more about what you do, not through long drawn out details, but stories. Engaging stories are simply the best way to capture an audience. Tell a story about how you, your product, or services helped someone.
Connect
Offer a personal touch by encouraging your website visitors to connect with you in lots of different ways. Don’t just throw up a contact form or phone number… give visitors a link to a newsletter (that they can subscribe to), a way to offer their feedback, and a way to connect with others who share the same issue they have. Humans are social animals — let them connect and interact.
Find Out More about how you can improve your websites performance?
