Your home page is a crucial part of your website. Most of the time it is the first page people see, it is probably the page that is clicked in the search engine results pages ( SERPs ), and it is the page that people will look for when they decide whether they want to do business with you.
Unfortunately, most small business websites are not built with a goal in mind.
In any case, no goal directly linked to the growth of the company. That is funny because if you have an appointment with a potential customer, you would probably start the meeting with a very well-defined objective. You want to make money by selling your product or service.
Why should your website be different?
Instead of building a website that focuses on generating sales, most small businesses focus on:
- Building a website that looks beautiful.
- Building a website that shows the creativity of the designer.
- Customers tell you what you want them to know rather than what they want to know.
- Unfortunately, none of these things contribute to sales, sales or profits. Why? Because the unfortunate truth is that people do not want to know what you want to say. They want to know that you have a solution to their problem.
- Once you do that, your website will attract more leads and generate new business.
Creating a good home page is actually not as difficult as you might think.
‘CONTENT FIRST’ PHILOSOPHY
Content? Yes, content. Although this contradicts what you are most familiar with web design, a ‘content first’ philosophy is something that you should consider strongly. What does that mean exactly?
It means that before you start with the design or layout of your website, ensure that 100% of your content (text) is ready. Despite what you may believe, the text on your website is equal to, if not more important, than the design itself.
WRITE GOOD TEXT
There is no manual to write good text for your home page. In fact, it can be reduced to just three basic steps:
- Determine who your customers are.
- Understand their problems and challenges
- Offer a solution to their problem (your ‘Value Proposition’).
- Who are your customers
The first step towards the design of a great start page is understanding who your customers are. The more details you can collect, the easier this process will be. You want to know enough about your ideal customer so that you can write a text that appeals to them as if you were in the same room.
If you have to speak to a large group of people, you will probably remember that person in the audience who nodded. Right? It is because the information they received was not relevant enough to get their individual attention. Their need for sleep was more important.
Have you ever spoken to someone one-on-one, eg in a coffee shop or in the supermarket, and has that person fallen asleep? I hope not. Why? Because they were personally involved in the conversation – they were directly involved.
You must treat your visitors the same way. Talk to them directly as if you had a one-on-one conversation. This gives you more chance to receive their undivided attention.
To determine who your customers are, you have to create a ‘merchant’. While this is an article in itself, here is a good explanation about HubSpot. In summary, a ‘salesperson’ would contain the following data as a starting point:
- Are they male or female?
- How old are they?
- What is their level of education?
- What is their profession?
- Are they married and do they have children?
- Which social media platforms do they prefer?
- Do they have a list of favorite websites?
- What are their life expectancies?
- What are they afraid of?
- How do they spend their free time?
- What is their favorite communication method?
You are probably wondering how you can obtain this information. The most reliable source is directly from your existing customers through a survey or personal interviews. If these methods are not available, this information can be obtained through a simple investigation and estimation.
Your ‘merchant’ needs to be constantly evaluated and updated, especially if you could not collect your first information directly from existing customers. Never assume that you have all the information you need.
Understand their problems and challenges
Spend five minutes on Google, look at a number of local businesses and you’ll find that most of the time they’re more interested in telling about themselves and explaining how they can help you. This shows one of two things:
They do not really know what their customers want or need or;
They still have to work on developing a good, customer-oriented website text.
Once you know who your customers are, it’s time to learn about their needs, their wishes, and their problems. To make it simple, if you do not know what your customers need, how can you expect to help them?
The easiest way to start this process is with your customer who is in front of you. Start by writing down a list of all possible reasons that make a customer decide to do business with you.
- Which pain will they avoid?
- What concerns will they solve?
- Which headaches will they be able to avoid?
- What benefit do they get?
By discovering and understanding the problems your customers face, you have the opportunity to propose a suitable solution.