First impressions are incredibly important when it comes to your website. It’s been shown by studies that it’s literally only 10 seconds of landing on your website if visitors will stick around or not! While your design layout and visuals play a vital role, there’s a few basic questions that you can answer right away that will keep your ideal clients on your site.
Whether visitors come to your website through your blog or another page, chances are they’ll head over to your homepage to see what you’re all about. For this reason, you have a huge opportunity to wow them and have everything on your homepage to make sure they stick around and take action.
So, you’ve got 10 seconds to impress and inform anyone that lands on your homepage. Here are 3 major things that they will be looking for:
1. What does your business do?
Now is your chance to make it super clear about what you do and what services/products offer.
Keep it short and snappy and ensure keywords are obvious. For example, if you are a skincare specialist and you offer treatments and sell your own product range, make these words pop so if your visitor is scanning the page (which by the way, most people do!) they will get an idea of what you do without having to read lots of text.
Pair this up with a beautiful photo too. You could have a shot of your studio, or a professional photo of you smiling in your branded uniform or even a product shot of your skincare line.
Within seconds, you’ve now said who you are, what you do, and what services and/or products you offer.
2. How can you help?
Whilst your visitor is looking for what you do, they will also be deciding if they need what you’re offering and if you what you do can actually help them. You want to avoid your visitor having to search for this information, make it clear and easy for them to find at the start of your homepage.
Here are a few ways you can show who you help:
A clear value proposition: this is a concise statement explaining how your service solves a problem or what specific benefits someone can expect from working with you.
Show testimonials and reviews from people just like them that you’ve helped.
If this makes sense for your business - show a portfolio or case studies of past work.
3. What are the next steps?
This is where mapping out your customer journey is very important and super helpful! You’ve created some lovely blurb about what you do and what you offer, now is the time to create a call to action (CTA) to help your customer take the next steps.
For example, you may have a section on your homepage that highlights your services so the CTA would be for your visitor to click a button that says, ‘learn more’. Another section could be where you highlight that you offer free consultation calls so you CTA could be a link that sends them through to a form that they have to fill in to book a slot.
Avoid having too many CTA options as this may overwhelm and confuse them. Confusion can cause frustration and as a result, cause the visitor to leave your website! You should only need one call to action for each separate bit of information, topic or idea.
If you would like to learn more about what to include on your website to convert sales, check out my other blog 5 Reasons Why Your Website May Not Be Converting Sales. For any questions, drop me an email daisy@daisycreative.org
