December 18, 2019

912 words 4 minutes.

Make the Most of Your Homepage

A woman in a striped shirt reviewing her website's homepage on her laptop.

Your website is the face of your business, your homepage your first impression.

Where prospective customers go to learn about who you are and what you have to offer, your homepage might be the only opportunity you’ll have to capture their interest and prompt them to utilize your services or products.

Does your home page clearly illustrate your business' value?

Learn the importance of making the most of your homepage and how to do it.

Keep Your Buyer in Mind From the Start

Your homepage messaging can’t be targeted at just anyone, but rather needs to be geared toward your business' target market.

Be sure that your homepage is directed at a defined buyer persona: a profile of the key segment of your audience.

You can’t just guess at who the target audience is that you will be optimizing your homepage for. You have to predetermine your buyer persona(s). But how?

You can construct a persona that best represents your business by using a combination of data and analytics, asking questions such as:

  • Who is your target audience?
  • What is her/ his role or job title?
  • What are her/ his needs or motivations?
  • What types of content do they prefer?
  • What are their typical purchase behaviors?
  • Where is she/ he in the buying process?

Taking all of this into consideration you then ask yourself the most important question of all: how does your service or product solve a problem for your target customer?

Answering that question, you can then craft a homepage statement that is sure to fit their exact need and help them engage with your brand.

Make Your Value Clear

Earning more than 50% of all visitor traffic, the home page is the most visited on a website, making it the ideal place to showcase what your business is and the value it offers to potential customers.

Front and center on your website’s homepage should be a clear statement that communicates to readers what your business can do for them.

Nobody wants to delve into a website to investigate what it is about. They want to open the homepage and know what the business can do for them immediately.

And by immediately we mean in the first five seconds.

The 5-Second Value Rule

If you want to get your website’s visitors to stay, you’ll have to grab their attention right off the bat.

Following the 5-second value rule, you’ll have just that amount of time to get the attention of a first-time visitor to your website. This means that on first glance of your homepage readers will make a snap judgment to either stay and explore or jump ship.

In order to keep their eyes on your page, you have only a moment to communicate what you do and how you do it.

A direct and simple statement, that is very clear and easy to understand, is the best way to communicate what your business is and does. Get too clever and you’ll run the risk of making your message murky, losing interest and having readers click away from your website.

It’s important to assure that it is easy for website visitors to understand immediately the value that your business will bring to their lives. And nothing communicates to people better than a visual aid.

Tell Your Story With Imagery

In today’s digital-centric world, people process visual data at a much higher speed than the written word.

Using images to show the success your audience will achieve when becoming your customer will bring them a greater understanding of your value.

Visuals account for 90% of information that is transmitted to the brain, information that is then processed at 60,000 times the speed that text is.

And never underestimate the power of audience engagement with video:

By incorporating the right imagery on your homepage, you can immediately communicate the impact that your business' value can have on the viewer’s life.

Once you have made clear the value your business will bring to the lives of prospective customers, you need to be sure they have an easy way to engage with the value you are offering.

Employ a Stand-out CTA

A clear call-to-action (CTA) that is prominently displayed on your homepage will prompt readers to take the next step to conversion and engage with your brand. In fact, a well placed and thought out CTA could be the tipping point between bounce and conversion.

You see these calls-to-action all the time:

  • “Read More”
  • “Try It Today”
  • “Online Chat”
  • Sign-up for subscriptions
  • Forms to gather info
  • Social media share prompts

Keep your CTA simple but original. Make it too generic and people won’t engage. Make it too gimmicky and people won’t engage.

While you are always well advised to incorporate CTAs on pages throughout your website, it is essential that a clear call-to-action is front and center on your homepage. This may be your only chance to convert a viewer visiting your site to a customer. Don’t waste the opportunity by expecting them to search for a way to engage.

Know who you are creating your homepage for. Clearly communicate your value, and quickly grab attention, incorporating simple messaging and defining visuals. Then offer viewers an easily accessible way to engage. Do all of this and you will have a successful homepage that will be sure to encourage conversion while minimizing bounce.

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