This guide will help you write website copy for your home page. This will in turn, help you to grow your business.
Turn Traffic into Leads and Sales
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.
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 destroys a lot of the money and effort spent generating traffic to your website. However, with some attention to the buying process, many more visitors can be turned into leads and buyers.
Get Visitors To Take Action
When people visit your website, you want to people to take action. They need move forward in the buying process, which can include a variety of things, including: downloading a valuable resources, scheduling a consultation and making a purchase. In order to get visitors to take action towards buying (or actually making a purchase), you need to give them the information they need in so that they can move forward.
Website Buying Process
A visitor to your website will typically ask themselves 5 questions when looking at your website home page that are relevant to the buying process.
- Am I in the right place? (Am I interested in what’s here?)
- Could this product or service fulfill a need(s) for me?
- Is this a credible company/offer?
- Can I afford the effort and cost required to use this product or service? (is it easy to buy and use?)
- Is the offer compelling enough for me to act now?
Your website home page needs to provide the above information in order to help visitors in their buying process.
With the influence of smartphones, today, people expect to find the information that they want on one page. They expect your home page to lay out the information that they need so it’s easy to read. They don’t want to have to search for information they think should be laid out for them to easily access.
Eight Buying Decision Keys
There are eight categories of information that enables a visitor to make a step in their buying decision. They may be laid out in eight sections or perhaps more or less. The main thing is to consider the information want before they decide to move forward on buying.
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 that could offer them value.
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.
What’s their Problem
This section’s prime goal is to get visitors thinking about their personal or business problems and why they want to solve them.
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. Consider the following:
- What problem(s) do you solve if someone buys your offering?
- How can your offering help them achieve their wants and desires?
- How will their life be different by owning getting what you offer?
Normally in this section, we don’t recommend listing features. However, if you do decide to focus on features, make sure you relate the benefit of each feature. One way of doing this is placing the following phrase between the feature and the benefit, “…and the benefit to you is…”
Process of Making a Purchase
People know that making a purchase usually involves more than money, it also takes time and effort.
If you can explain the process of purchasing from you, it provides confidence that your company is experiences and that your process will help to minimize the time, effort and cost required for implementing and using what you are offering.
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 You
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.
Consider 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 learn more about you and your company. This keeps people on your home page and moving through their 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
- Also, if relevant, you may want to have a 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 situation and
- how your offering can help them get what they want.
Remind them of the problems that they have. Help them to think about how it won’t get any better till they make a change. Get them thinking about how their life can be better by getting your product or service.
Doing this will help your Call to Action to be more effective
Call to Action
You want people to take 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:
- Book a Consultation
- Show Me How
- 100% No Risk Guarantee
- Get your free report today
- Get a Free…
Also consider having Call to action buttons in multiple places on one page.
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 on your home page. Be brief where possible.
Remember
Your company spends valuable time, money and effort on getting traffic to your website. You are losing lots of opportunities if your hoe page isn’t built to help people in their buying process.
What To Do Next
Start writing. 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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