Every business builds a website. It's one of the first things that we do. But is your homepage helping you or hurting you? That's what we're going to talk about today. How to apply copy to your homepage. Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me in my private Facebook group, go to MarissaShadrick.com forward slash community. Hello, hello. So good to be here today. Thank you for joining me. Today we're going to talk about your website. Does it need a makeover? Have you included what you need on the website? Is your messaging super, super clear and targeted and specific? We're going to go over a few points about your website homepage and make sure that you've built not just a static page, but you've built a lead generating machine that works while you sleep. It's so important and oftentimes it's one of the first things that we create. And sometimes we create it before we have all of the messaging really clear as far as who we're serving and how we're showing up and how we're unique. And we just feel like we need to get it up and running and then move on to something else. And before we know it, when we look back, there's some things that we can tighten up, or maybe things that we can add or even delete to make it more streamlined. So we're going to talk all about website homepage. We're not going to go beyond that because there's a lot to say on the homepage alone. And I'm going to start first by saying that design is not enough. There's a lot of templates out there, a lot of services that provide templates, and they look beautiful, but your words matter. What you put on the homepage matters as far as the copy, the words that you're using. The headline matters, the subhead matters, how you create white space. If you have specific transformational benefits, you want to put those in bullets. We'll talk more about this, but you want to make the experience unique and memorable, and you want to remove complexity and make it easy for your visitors to know exactly what you're about and how you solve a problem that they have. So this will make it super, super clear. You also want to make sure that when they come to your homepage, before they start looking at buttons or anything else, that you show them what to do next. And it's very, very important to prepare the website homepage in a way that they can have an easy, self-guided experience because you're not there to show them what to do or what to click, unless you, of course, you create a video, and that's going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you if you choose that. But you want to make sure that you have everything in place and structured in a way that makes it easy for them to know what to do next. Because oftentimes the video is turned off and people mute videos, and we don't know that they're going to watch the entire video. So we want to make sure the copy is really, really clear. Now, beyond design, we want to make sure that the navigation is very simple and clear. We don't want to have a lot of buttons and tabs on top, and then sub tabs and more tabs and more places to go and more sidebars so that the home page is really congested and it's too much information. It's not really streamlined and really clean. We want a real clean page that makes it really easy for them to have their eyes go to a specific target place on the upper part of your website, which we call above the fold, and know exactly what it is that you do for them. So the navigation is important. Now you can have buttons and you can have tabs, but I see a lot of tabs and a lot of buttons. And if they start clicking around, they'll get confused. They'll be on this page and that page, and maybe they'll get sidetracked on a blog post. And before you know it, they click out because they've exhausted themselves and they haven't clicked to engage with you or to schedule an appointment or to buy a product or service. So you want to make sure the navigation is very simple and easy for them. Now, beyond design and navigation, we look at aesthetics, and that includes the brand colors. Now, this is the fun part. We get to choose colors that are going to be very consistent throughout the other pages of our website, and we bring it over to our social media platforms as well. Now, the brand colors, the navigation, the layout, the design, the copy, it all sets a tone. It sets that first impression. The next thing beyond design, navigation, and aesthetics would be obviously keywords because we want to get some organic traffic. So we want to make sure that on the back end we have the keywords for our home page. And then finally, the prime real estate is that part that I mentioned earlier that is above the fold. And that means before they have to grab their mouse and scroll down, everything that they see when they first land on your page. That part is called the header, and oftentimes you'll see an image behind some text, and they'll adjust the opacity where it's almost transparent so that you can really see the text very, very clearly. And it's a subtle image in the background. So whether you want to have an image or whether you want to have a video, the text that you have in that section in the header above the fold, you want to have your headline and your subhead. And if you are going to share some of the benefits of what they're going to discover if they respond to your call to action above the fold, then you can put that in bullets as well. Now notice I didn't say the first thing you need to do is go get a logo, right? You can get a logo, but that's not the first thing you need to do. You really want to consider this as your virtual storefront, and the messaging has to be very, very clear and very targeted to your audience. So I'm going to share five tips that's going to help you as you design and you consider the navigation, the aesthetics, the keywords, and the header, the prime real estate on your home page. Keep these five tips in mind. The first thing is obviously prospect awareness. You need to figure out where is your audience at this point? Where are they in this journey? Are they completely oblivious to what you offer and serve? Or is it something that once they land on your homepage, they understand how you solve their problem. It's a no-brainer for them. So your messaging will be very clear for someone that has been already looking for the solution, or is it something that's going to need a little bit more explanation? You don't want to have jargon on your website. You want to make it all about them and consider where they are at this time. Are they in the beginning stages of a process? Are they more in the intermediate stage of a process? Or are they people that are more advanced and need maybe a higher ticket service? You need to figure out where they are. And the only way you can do that is really through market research by asking a lot of questions and finding out what exactly is the main desire that they have. Notice that I'm using a lot of terms that I use for other things in copy because it's all the same. Copywriting, fundamentally, you need to understand your audience before you write a sales page, an email, before you create your website, you need to understand where they are and write accordingly because the homepage isn't really about you, it's about them. So often I see on a homepage that it's very much about the business and not really about the prospect that's visiting that homepage. So prospect awareness is really important so that you know what to put as far as the text goes and what you should have not only above the fold, but below the fold as well. The second thing you want to keep in mind is the pain and the aspiration. Now, again, market research is going to help you with a lot of this. And once you figure out what that main desire is and the pain not having that one desire, you really need to dial into that. So, in other words, if they didn't do anything, what would life look like? How worse will life be? Now, this pain or this problem that they have, you need to consider, okay, if they have this problem, what is the solution and what will life look like after they apply the solution? What is the aspiration? What is the afterstory? So some people call it the island of pain and the island of pleasure. And the way you get them from one place to the other is your solution or your method or your framework. But really, when you're thinking about pain and aspiration, you really want to speak in a way where they can self-identify and say, oh gosh, that's me. I struggle with that so much, or I think about that so much. You want to be able to show them that your business is going to help them achieve that that they aspire to achieve. So whatever it is that they want to achieve that aspirational goal, you can help them reach that. The third thing you want to think about is the emotional connection. Now, when we're talking about pain and we're talking about the goals that we have and the results that we want, that's very emotionally charged, right? It connects to our heart, and that's why it's so important. So when we write our copy for our home page, they're going to have some type of emotional connection. Either they're going to have a moment of hope where they figure out, wow, this person can really help me, or they're going to figure out, you know, I'm not alone. Other people struggle with this. Or they're going to get excited and say, oh, this person has exactly what I need. There's a lot of emotion there. So I feel that a home page, you need to speak in first person and not in third person because you want even a deeper connection and make sure that your copy has a lot of benefit-driven language that really helps them see this as an opportunity. So beyond the header, as people scroll down, you could add a component of credibility. And if you've been featured, say in a magazine, you can have featured on and you can have the icon of the various magazines you've been featured in, or you can have endorsements from prior customers, or you can even have character endorsements. If you're just starting out and you haven't really launched your business and you don't have those endorsements or testimonials, you can have character endorsements as well. Everything is very clear. And don't think transaction, think transformation. You are connecting. This is the first step. This is the introduction. This is where you want to gain trust. And you don't want to be clever, you want to be clear. So all of this helps, and it doesn't have to be congested. It could be a nice, easy flow from the header, and then maybe you can have a little bit more information on how you serve people, endorsements, but above the fold, you just want to make sure that not only do you have your header and your subhead and maybe a few bullets, but you want to have that call to action up above. And that is very important. You're guiding them to the first step. So you want to make sure it's very, very clear. There's nothing more frustrating when I go to a website for a place that's local, like a local business, like a brick and mortar, and I want to know where they're located, and I can't find their address and I can't find their phone number. I have to click around and look for it. That is frustrating to me. So if it's a brick and mortar, they should have their address and phone number somewhere visible for people that want to go to their store. But online, you want to figure out what is the first step for them? What's the next logical step for them? Maybe it's to go ahead and buy, depending on the price point. Maybe it's to schedule a call. Maybe it's to download a free resource. I've even seen on websites where it says start here and get your blank, whatever that might be. Make it super, super, super clear so people don't have to guess. Remove all guesswork and streamline that. So when they go there, they can easily self-navigate and see exactly what they need to do. The more you can remove complexity and confusion, the more you're going to win. So I hope this was helpful for you. I know that home pages, sometimes we have to give it a makeover and we have to give it a little facelift because it becomes dated, or maybe we started offering a new product or our business as we've surveyed customers. We realize that we need to focus in a specific area. We've become more specific in our niche, and we need to we need to adjust our home page so it reflects that. So it's important to get that dialed in. So when you update your home page or you create your homepage, you want to see what kind of traffic you're getting and whether people are clicking and how long they're on that home page. You want to make sure your keywords are in place. And sometimes it might need tweaking. You might start without a video, and then you might consider testing and putting a video in there. And if you're launching anything new, you might consider switching it out and putting whatever you're launching that's new up above, a little teaser above on the home page, so they know that this is something new that's happening. And then when you're not launching, you can switch it out and put it back to what it was. So it doesn't have to be static. You can change things and tweak things on the home page, but you want to make it super, super clear. So I hope that was helpful for you. I really encourage you to go check out your homepage or maybe have a friend or someone that doesn't know what you do, go to your webpage and see if they understand exactly what it is you do and how you serve people. And that will help a lot. That will be very, very telling to see what you need to tweak. Alrighty. Well, until next time, take care and I'll talk to you soon. Wait, before you go, if you found this podcast helpful, subscribe so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. Remember, cultivate resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.