Create A Home-Page that Actually Converts!

Most website home-pages are a mish-mash of content, marketing-speak and half-hearted call to actions, often the result of a compromise between management, designers and marketing staff.  The committee approach taken often results in a confused message, too many ideas and a poor conversion rate.  In this article we discuss a better way, one based on finding a clear, focused message supported by universal design principles.

Who are you talking to?

Before even considering your website design, you need to consider the purpose of your website (or business!).  Answer these questions:

  • Who do you want to connect with?
  • What do they want?
  • What are you offering them?
  • What do you want them to do (once at your home-page)?

To create a clear message on your website, you need straight-forward, simple and clear answers to these questions.

What problem do you solve?

Now, create either a single sentence or 3 very short bullet points that describes what your business offers.  Make it specific, clear and so anyone can quickly understand what you offer.  Speak to the person you identified that you want to connect to.  What do they want?  What are you offering them?  Keep it as short as possible, but no shorter.

Some examples are:

If you need more room, you can take this approach of a big and small sentence.

Most businesses will find this process incredibly challenging because they may not yet have a simple business model or unique selling point.  This is a fundamental problem with the business that needs to be addressed before spending dollars on a new website or marketing materials.  If you want your website to actually get you customers, you can't afford to start with a weak offering.

What action do you want them to take?

Once you have their attention, the question now is what do you want them to do?  Examples of call to actions include:

  • Make a purchase
  • Make a download
  • Make an enquiry
  • Sign-up to a free trial or newsletter

Less here is more. Do not make your user have to think too hard or make a decision from many options.  Better to have a single strong call to action, than several weak ones.

A goal of most online businesses should be to develop an email database that can be used to contact visitors in the future.  Email collection should normally always be part of the call to action, so you can continue the conversation with the visitor after they leave your website.  In fact, most conversions are made on repeat visits to your site!

Here is an exampe of a strong offering combined with a straight forward call to action.

From a recent website we developed, Laser Electrical.

In our next article we cover good design principles to follow in creating your home-page.

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