Episode 25: How to create the perfect home page for your website

First impressions are everything and your website's homepage is exactly that.

When someone lands on your home page, you have less than 5 seconds to grab their attention and connect with them emotionally.

And if you don't, a potential client could bounce straight off your website and onto someone else's.

We don't want that to happen do we?!

So that's why, in today's main event, I'm going to talk you through all of the ingredients that make a great home page.

Helping you to turn website traffic into hot leads for your consultancy.

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Let's get started by taking a big step back...

A lot of my career has been spent in marketing agencies selling and delivering websites.

And when we sat down with our clients at the planning stage, I'd explain that every page on your as a job.

And you need to go through each page of your website and ask yourself "what is the job of this page and what do we want people to do?"

So let's look at what jobs your home page has right now.

First, it needs to grab someone's attention and to keep them sticky in under five seconds.

It needs to build an emotional connection with them.

It needs to encourage navigation and act as a springboard to other pages.

And finally, It needs to have a very clear call to actions.

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Okay, so now we've taken a step back and created a brief for what your home page needs to achieve...

We can now start to block out your home page and thinking about the different sections that it needs to include.

So, if you looked at a thousand websites and their analytics you would see that the 4 most popular pages are:

The home page, the about us page, the services page and the contact page.

So if we think back to the jobs your website has..

Your home page is a springboard for navigation so it makes sense to include these pages as sections on your home page.

That's why I'd typically advise to include a hero section at the top - so this is the bit you'll see as soon as you land on the website.

And then beneath this, I'd expect to see an about us section, a section about your services and how you can help and then your call to actions - whatever they may be.

And scattered between these sections will be lots of social proof like stats, case studies and testimonials.

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Okay,  so now let's have a quick deep dive into each section to give you some ideas on how they should be presented.

Starting with the hero section...

The hero section is usually a big image, a big statement, and is the most important section of your website to get right.

In order to grab someone's attention in less than 5 seconds, it needs to clearly answer these 4 critical questions:

So if you go to my website thehrmarketingguy.com and take a look at my hero section, you'll see the following headlines.

"Trusted by hundreds of ambitious HR consultants worldwide"

So this me answering "who is this for"

I then have my main headline which is "Get new clients and create a life you love"

So this is me answering "what do you do and why should I care"

And then I say "Join the HR Marketing Box and I'll show you how".

And this is me answering "What should I do next"

And behind all of this is a big picture of a lady with her arms out overlooking a lovely mountain scene and for me, this picture represents freedom.

So there's a nice mix of ingredients here which make an attention grabbing and emotionally driven hero section which works for me.

And you should try to achieve the same thing with your hero section.

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If we move onto the about us section then, it would be great to see pictures of you and your team here with a little bit of text accompanying it summarising what you're about.

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You then need to have a section about your services and I think the best way to present this is via feature boxes which is great for navigation.

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And then you need to think about your call to actions and the best way to present these.

So typically you'd have two call to actions.

Your primary call to action should be to book a call in with you - so why not embed your calender link directly onto the website making it super easy for prospects to see your availability.

And then your secondary call to action should be some sort of data capture - so typically you'll be giving a lead magnet away for free so you'll need to have a nice section that promotes this with a webform too. 
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And then you'll have your social proof scattered about to break the other sections up - so think stats, case studies and testimonials and you can present these as static sections of carousels.

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So, now we've done a very quick deep-dive into each section of your website, we need to talk about the importance of brand.

For me there's two aspects of brand.

There's the obvious stuff like your logo, colour scheme, font and design.

And then there's the values and feelings that the visuals are trying to create.

And you need to get both right in order to create a brand that connects with who you're trying to sell to.

There's a very famous book on branding called the brand gap and in it... there's a quote that says "Design is the language of feeling".

I think this is so powerful and for me it emphasises how important brand is and how much influence it has over us, without us even realising it.

So if you've got your laptop open right now, take a fresh look at your website and ask yourself what feeling are you your left with after looking at your current design.

If it doesn't represent you, your values and the feeling you're trying to create then it could do with a revamp.

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And finally, let's talk about messaging.

Messaging is undoubtedly the most important thing to get right on your website.

And to help you create messaging that connects with your audience, I advice using the Story Brand Framework by Donald Miller.

He created the storybrand framework to help businesses communicate their value proposition simply, clearly, and most importantly, powerfully, through the art of storytelling.

Through his research, Donald recognised that every good story had the same seven psychological elements.

The story brand framework helps you incorporate these 7 elements into your own brand story that helps you create great messaging for your website.

Honestly, I love this framework so much and use it all of the time.

And if you'd like to learn more about the story brand framework then check out episode 3 of my podcast.

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Okay, so that brings us to the end of this week's main event.

First impressions are everything and you have less than 5 seconds to grab someone's attention and connect with them emotionally before they bounce off onto another HR consultants website.

And that's why it's so important to make your website's home page as good as it possible can be.

In today's episode, we've spoken about...

Look, creating a great website is a really tricky and never ending job.

So if you do need someone to speak to, I'm here to give you a helping hand.

Just get in touch and let's book in a call.