What should a good website home page include?
It’s surprising how many business owners don’t consider what a good website home page should include. Many home pages should actually be the company’s “about” page because they are all about the company!
There’s a tried and true formula for a good website home page that I’ll share here. But first, is your home page really holding you back from getting leads, or is it something else?
Not Enough Leads? Is It SEO (Organic Site Traffic)or a Poorly Converting Home Page Holding You Back?
If you are not getting the desired number of leads or sales through your website each month, there are two questions you should ask yourself first to determine the possible root of the problem:
Am I getting enough traffic to my website? If yes, the problem could be your home page or other pages on your site failing to convert website visitors (traffic) into leads or sales. If no, then you have a search engine optimization (SEO) problem.
You first need to get qualified traffic to your site. Then, the site should be like a sales person and help you convert website visitors into leads or sales.
Is the traffic converting into leads or sales? If you are attracting organic search enginge traffic, or website visitors to your site, but you are not getting leads or sales, there are several possible reasons. The one reason we will explore today is a poorly designed and poorly messaged home page. Other reasons may be that you are attracting the wrong traffic (you are not attracting people who are interested in buying your products or services), your prices are too high, your products do not have all of the features customers desire, and more. In other words, there are a lot of marketing angles to explore. The one we will explore here is the design and layout of the home page.
Good Website Home Page Design and Messaging
I chose good website home page design and messaging as one possible reason why traffic is not converting into leads for several reasons.
First, this is a very common problem. Many businesses focus on the wrong things on their home page. They also design sites themselves and lack the expertise of a good web designer who knows the important of layout to lead customers through the sales process.
Another reason why I chose this topic is that it is a very easy fix, even for companies who DIY their websites. As I explained in my Monday Marketing Motivation video today, I met with a lovely business owner last week to discuss why her website wasn’t converting organic search engine traffic from Google and Bing into leads on her site. She was getting plenty of visitors, but no leads.
What struck me as very obvious when I looked at the home page of her site was how inwardly focused it was. It was all about her company; how long they had been in business, who they served, what they did. Very meat and potatoes so to speak. It lacked empathy for the customer. It did not indicate that she knew her customers’ pain points and could solve them. She does that every day and she is very good at that, but her website wasn’t showing it!
I suspected – and the Google Search Console metrics proved my hunch – that customers were clicking though to her website, but when they got to her page, nothing resonated with them, so they left after 30 seconds or less.
We decided to tweak both the copy and the layout and use good website home page design best practices to see if that would convert more of her site traffic to leads.
Tweaking the Home Page Design: Test and Measure
Making tweaks like the ones we made to my client’s site is easy enough that even if you DIY your website, you can make them yourself.
Here is what I recommend you do when tweaking the home page design:
- Take a screenshot of the “before” home page
- Write down your page metrics before making any changes (traffic, time on site, search position, number of leads per month)
- Make the recommended changes (more on that, below)
- Publish
- Ask Google and Bing to re-index your page
- Each month, for the next 3-6 months, note the metrics
- Compare at the end of 3 or 6 months
- If you have solved the problem, great! If not, try again, and tweak something else.
Numbers don’t lie. Tracking metrics helps you see clearly whether or not your changes made an impact. And, by taking a screenshot of the ‘before’ page, you can easily replicate it and put the old page back in place if you decide it gave you better results before.
Best Practices for Home Page or First Page Design and Messaging
Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty. What are the best practices for good website home page or first page design and messaging?
- The page should be clean, load quickly, and immediately speak to the customer – your target audience. First thing’s first: who are you selling to? Imagine that person in front of you. What problems do they bring to you to solve? That is the focus of your messaging – their problem, your solution.
- The headline should be all about the solution to their problem.
- Next, reiterate that you understand their problems.
- Give people a clear call to action. What do you want them to do? Make an appointment, sign up for a newsletter, download something? Ask for it clearly and consistently and ask for it at the top of the page. Use the same language, same button size and shape, throughout your website whenever you ask for this action.
- Include near the top of the page testimonials, client logos, or other proof points that demonstrate others have trusted you to solve their problems.
- Include other proof points or trust indicators, such as membership logos, awards won, or similar icons that help customers understand your company is valid, legit and good to work with.
- Tell people again how you solve their problem.
- Ask them again for the call to action
- Push non-essential (but good for SEO!) material into the footer or elsewhere. This includess your blog, any other material that helps drive traffic, job openings, and other essential pages that may not be directly related to the sales process.
- Include plenty of relevant visuals (licensed stock photography, for example) or other visual items to break up the text.
- Test all the buttons and links to make sure they go where you want them to!
Of course, you want to be sure your page looks great on mobile devices, and loads quickly, too. And need I say that you should follow up promptly on any leads? Of course you should! Make sure that customers know you care about them and their business by following up promptly on all leads, inquiries, and questions.
Good Web Design and Good SEO Go Hand-in-Hand
Good web design and good SEO work hand-in-hand to generate organic search traffic to your site and convert traffic into leads and sales. If something isn’t working in this process, you’ll feel like you’re shouting into the void. You’re doing all the right things; publishing great content, using social networking, running ads. But the sales or leads aren’t there. You have to make smart changes, test and measure them, and then continue tweaking and analyzing those changes to continually improve your sales. With time, patience, and best practices, hopefully you will see incremental improvements.