This how to guide will help you to understand how to write website copy for your home page. Better home page copywriting will help you to get more sales.
Getting Leads Takes Money and Effort
Getting people to your website can take a lot of money and effort. You can do things like Search Engine Optimization, Advertising, Social Media Marketing, and Referral Marketing. All of these can get more traffic to your website. Unfortunately, just because you get someone to your website, doesn’t mean that they will do something that leads to buying from your company.
Don’t Waste Your Lead Generation Efforts
Most websites today do not help people in their buying process. Websites that don’t help in the buying process cost their companies lots of valuable leads and sales. This lack of concern for the visitors buying process turns the money, time and effort spent on generating leads to nothing.
The Goal Is To Get Visitors To Take Action
When people visit your website, you want to people to take action, to buy or to move them forward in their buying process. Before you get your visitors to act, you need to get their attention, engage them, and help them through their buying process – the things they want to consider before making a buying decision.
Website Buying Process
A visitor to your website will typically ask themselves 5 questions when looking at your website home page:
- Am I in the right place? (Am I interested in what’s here?)
- Could this product or service fulfill a need(s) form me?
- Is this a credible company/product?
- (Can I afford the effort and cost required to use this product or service?)
- Is the offer compelling enough for me to act now? (buy, sign up, call, etc.)
Your web page must provide the information that your visitor needs to help them in their buying process.
More and more, people are expecting to find most of the information that they need on one page. They aren’t expecting all of the information, but at least a high-level summary. For example, on the about page of your website you might have 6-8 paragraphs, but on the home page, you might have 2-3.
Here are eight categories of information that your visitor needs in order to make a buying decision, or take a step towards making a purchase. (A step towards a buying decision might be to download a report or start a product trial).
The Eight Buying Decision Sections
Here are the eight buying decisions. They may be laid out in eight sections or perhaps more or less. The main thing here is to consider the process by which people consider what they want to buy and provide them that information.
Feature Statement/Image
This section’s prime goal is to make sure visitors can quickly understand what you offer and know that they are on the website they want to be on.
Your feature statement for your company/product/service, should clearly state what you offer or do. This is not a place to get clever with your copywriting. Don’t confuse people. Keep your message simple and clear.
Problem
This section’s prime goal is to get visitors thinking about their own problems (or their company problems) and why it’s important to address them.
Make it easy for people to connect with the problems and desires. You may want to address any or all of the following:
- What problems do people have that your offering solves?
- How will it solve their problem?
Promise/Benefits
The purpose of this section is to get your visitor to think about how their life will be better when they buy your product or service.
- What problem(s) do you solve if someone buys your offering?
- How will their life be different by owning getting what you offer?
You want to be inclined to focus on providing a list of features. If you do this, make sure that you relate the benefit of the feature. You can do this by placing the following phrase between the feature and the benefit, “…and the benefit to you is…”
Process
People know that making a purchase usually involves not just money, but time and effort. Think of the time and effort to implement new accounting software at a company or buying some furniture from Ikea.
People want assurance that you have process for the purchase. This provides them with confidence that you will minimize the time and effort required for implementing and using your product.
In order to help people know that you have a process to help them, provide them with an overview of your buying process in short succinct steps, such as 1-2-3. For example, with The Story Web Design & Marketing, we have a How to Get Started section in about the middle of our home page.
About
The second most visited pages on many websites is the About page (the home page is usually the most visited page). People often want to know more about you and your company before they move forward.
Putting a brief About section on the home page, you will reduce the number of people who feel they need to go to your About page in order to read more about you and your company. This keeps people on your home page and moving through the buying decision.
Proof
This section helps people increase their confidence that you can deliver what you promise.
What helps to prove that you can deliver what the visitor needs? Provide some proof that enables visitors to increase their confidence in your ability to deliver.
Typically, 3rd party references are the best confidence builders. These could include:
- Testimonials: consider having a section with 2-3 testimonials
- Certifications: consider a row of certification logos or authorizations, etc.
- Clients: consider a row of logos of existing/past clients
- Portfolio: display your best work (we think we have a great portfolio, you can visit our home page to see some of our work, or go to our web design portfolio page to see even more)
Reminder of Needs/Problems/Desires
The purpose of this section is to remind your visitors of why they aren’t satisfied with their present scenario and how your offering can help them get what they want. Remind them of the problems that they have and get them thinking about how it won’t get any better till they change. Get them thinking about how their life can be better by getting your product or service.
Call to Action
The goal of this section is to get people to take some action. It may be to get people to make a purchase, or perhaps it’s to get them to do something that can lead to a purchase, like download a guide or a report.
Make your call to action (CTA) as compelling as possible. Some examples of a good CTA include:
- 100% No Risk Guarantee
- Get a Free…
- Show Me How
- Get your free report today
Do’s and Don’ts
Do Skimmable
Make your website easy to skim. First time visitors to your website will skim the website before they read it. Make sure you have solid use of headlines and bullets. Use short sentences and short paragraphs.
Don’t Give It All
Don’t think you have to be thorough in providing everything and end up with a super long home page. Be brief where possible.
Remember
Your company spends valuable time, money and effort on getting people to your website. If your website isn’t built to help people in their buying process, you are losing out on opportunities you should have from your efforts.
What To Do Next
Start writing. Don’t think that you have to do it all in one sitting. Plan 3 or four 30 minute sessions. Or if you want help, contact The Story Web Design & Marketing at 800-349-3394 for help with your copywriting today so you can get more sales and grow your business.
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