The Importance of Having an Effective Home Page on Your Website

The home page is the most important page of a website. It is the one page that all your visitors will view. A poor home page can destroy any chance of achieving your website objectives within a few seconds. A good home page is the blueprint for every successful website. Your homepage should set-up the key elements necessary to close a sale, or generate an enquiry (depending on what your primary and secondary objectives are).

If your website is focused on a single product/service, then launch straight into your main sales copy on the home page. Whereas, if your website contains a number of products or services, then you need to write some copy for your home page that encourages your visitors to click into your products or services pages.

Before we get started on this let’s review once again the steps to visitor conversion.

The Six Steps to Visitor Conversion:

1. Do I trust you?
   
2. Do I believe you?
   
3. Do you understand my needs?
   
4. What’s in it for me?
   
5. What do you want from me?
   
6. Is it worth it?

Whenever you structure a home page for a website that has multiple products or services you need to be aware of the following key items…

Establish Your Trust & Credibility

Establish your trust and credibility using the highlight section of the screen (the right-hand column)– click here to review if you don’t know what this is.

Key items for establishing trust are:

• Testimonials

• References

• Partners & Affiliates (borrowed credibility)

• Guarantees

• Awards

• Case Studies

• Evidence of a physical presence

• Privacy and other legal policies

• Professional design and error-free content (more credibility).

Pick one or two items and feature them in the right-hand column.

Have a Great Headline

Write a great headline that grabs the visitor and draws them into your site. On multiple products or services sites we have found that headlines that focus on the USP are best. Hit them right up-front with the biggest and best benefit that you have – your USP!

You may also want to include an opening hook to support your headline and to ensure that you have really ‘hooked’ the visitor into your site. The same principles for headlines and opening hooks apply here as with long sales copy.

Sharp Specials!

Use your home page to hit your visitors between the eyes with a sharp special. Include up-to two more really sharp specials, should that be appropriate. Remember, the first order is always the hardest, and ditto with the first item in the shopping cart. If you can get one of your really sharp specials into the shopping cart then chances are the same customer will buy a number of other products (especially if you have strong cross-sells and up-sells).

Don’t forget to write the copy for your products or services that are ‘on special’. This is one of the most overlooked ‘basics’ with a website that features multiple products or services. There will be more on this in the next two sections.