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Coaching a client last week, I was reminded of a trap it’s very easy to fall into when it comes to writing copy for your website. It’s that old re-inventing the wheel thing. You can talk to people about what you do, but when it comes to writing it down, you lose the words. What I want to know is… who said you need to find different words in the first place?

Yes, writing website copy can be daunting. And the challenge is very often one of how to condense everything you want to say into bite-sized chunks. Most coaches, though, have already worked on this when you’ve crafted, practised and polished your elevator speech. So even if it doesn’t feel like it, you do actually have a head start!

Let’s take a quick look at what needs to go on your home page. You’ll probably spot rather a lot of similarities to your trusty elevator speech…

** The important basics of your home page copy

First of all, you need to make it clear who you work with – who falls into your target market. If you work with single mothers, for example, say it up front. That way the website visitors who fall into your target market will be attracted to read more. Those who don’t fit will move on elsewhere. And that’s just fine.

The second really important piece of content for your home page is a brief description of the results that you deliver. These will be, of course, just the kind of results that your potential future clients want to achieve. By being clear and concise again, you will catch the eye of potential future clients and encourage them to read more. Others who have different interests will just surf on by. And that, again, is just fine.

The other vital piece of the jigsaw is your sign-up box where you ask visitors to leave you their name and contact details. However interested they are in what you offer, if you don’t capture these details from them, they may as well have surfed on by. And that really isn’t fine at all!

** Strangely enough, it’s not about you!

So many coaches get all hung up about ’selling themselves’. But you know what? You don’t actually have to do that. What sells best is copy that’s about the client, not about you. Follow the guidelines above and you’ll have a statement that says something like:

‘Coaching for single mums who want to earn a living working from home’ Or:

‘Are you a corporate professional looking for a way out? We specialise in helping you to step off the treadmill, take control of your life and plan a new future.’ Or:

‘I work with artists and writers to make creative output a practical and financially viable reality.’

Take your basic elevator speech and you’ll probably find that it follows a similar formula. The temptaion is always to add in a huge chunk about HOW you achieve the results. You know, all that stuff about coaching!

But don’t forget that above all else your webiste visitors want to know if you work with clients just like them. They aren’t hugely interested in how you achieve it. Later on, maybe, yes. But not at the point where you’re making your first impression and they’re weighing up, at the speed of light, whether to hang around on your website or not.

So begin with your ideal client in mind and write your home page just for them. Imagine they are standing in front of you and you are answering their questions. Tell them exactly what they want to know and do your best to avoid coaching terminology. Keep the sentences short, use relevant sub headings and bullet points and before you know it… hey presto! A clear, concise, relevant and client-attracting home page of your very own.

Caveats:

This information applies to business web sites only – personal, government, portal, or special interest web sites are not considered.



The first page that shows up when you go to a web site using just the URL (www.thewebsite.com) is considered to be the Home page regardless of what it may be called. Some web sites call this page by other names such as “Welcome” or “Introduction” or “Entry” or even “Index”.



There are always two types of visitors to your site that should be considered, people (actual human visitors to your site) and robots (automatic software, also called spiders, or web crawlers) used by search engines.



Why is your home page so important?

Your home page is important because it is the page on which the crucial decision is made: 

Is this web site relevant?

There is so much information and so many web sites on the World Wide Web these days that the first decision made while surfing the web site always “Is this web site relevant?” Does it cover the topic I wanted? Does it have the type of information I need?

For example: If you are looking to buy shoes, you may go to Google and type in “shoes”. On the results page, you may find a site that is all about the history of shoes. While on the right topic, this site would not be exactly what you where looking for.

As a surfer, you will likely skim the home page and notice first whether the web site is about shoes. Then you will look to see whether there are shoes for sale on this site. If not – or it is not clear, then you may just move on to the next site in the list.

Search engines use your home page when evaluating your web site for relevance to key word searches. In fact it is the most heavily weighted page. If the word “shoes” is not on your home page, then your site may not come up at all in a Google result page for the search term “shoes”.

Other pages may well be used by both types of visitors, but often the crucial decision has already been made on the home page.

If your home page does not supply the information you think a potential client will need to make a decision to stay on the site or not, in a way that can be easily and quickly assimilated by both types of visitors, then your home page has failed its most important task.

If people never see your web site, nothing else matters.

Your home page is critical to both getting people to your site and keeping potential clients on the site once they find it.

Traditional advertising and business marketing is essential to the success of a business and must be included in every business plan. You should be driving as much traffic to your web site as you can by using traditional marking methods. Web marketing should never be considered sufficient on its own.

However, for most businesses, search engine optimization is very important. Search engines can provide a significant portion of traffic to a web site. But this can only happen if the web site is properly optimized. Optimization starts with the home page as it is the most heavily weighted page for search engine purposes.

What information should be on your home page?

“A concise and specific summary of the site, using as many key words as possible. The summary should include products and services offered, by brand name and in lay language. The primary competitive advantages or main distinguishing factors of the company should be mentioned as well. Any relevant restrictive factors should also be specified (ie wholesale only, or service areas covered)”. Contact information is also useful on a home page.

In other words – both people and search engines should, from the home page text alone, be able to determine if this site is relevant to their search.

Does the order of the information or formatting matter?

Search engines rank text on a first come first served basis. This means that the first text found on a page is considered to be more important than text at the bottom of the page. Formatting is also considered by search engines. Headings using the correct HTML tags are weighted more heavily than plain text. You should use headings and sub headings to organize and display your information according to its importance. Your headings should use plain, specific, key-word rich text. For people reading your home page, the same applies. Writing your homepage “in order of importance” and using headings to organize the text makes it easier for most people to read and understand the information presented.

Flash, Animation, and Images

What search engine optimization means is: “making it as clear as possible what the site is all about – in terms a search engine robot can understand”.

If you only remember one thing about search engines, remember this: Search engines can only read text. Search engines cannot read images, or text embedded in images, they cannot read text inside of flash movies, or understand voice over commentary. Search engines cannot read text embedded in JavaScript or text that is dynamically created when a visitor asks for it (text produced as a result of a data base call for instance). Search engines can only read text in HTML or in meta tags specifically written for search engines.

This is important because it is very common these days for web sites not to be written in HTML. Technologies like flash and Java script, among others, are now very common. It is hard for a layperson to know the difference, since web sites using search engine friendly technology can seem indistinguishable from those that do not. One useful test is “can you copy and paste the text from the web site to your text editor”? If the text is written in HTML you will be able to do this. If you can’t, then it is likely that search engines will not be able to read this text.

Limiting the kind of technologies that are not search engine friendly to non essential decorative purposes makes the most sense for a business web site. This way you can have the advantages of these technologies (cool graphics and effects) without any of the down sides (like poor search engine performance).

Is Load time still important?

Yes! Load time is still important. There is still a significant portion of people on dial up Internet connections. If your home page takes too long to load because of too many images or flash, your potential visitors may just give up and go elsewhere!

Getting to the rest of the site.

Every major page on your site should be linked-to from your home page. 

This serves three purposes; 

1) So that it is clear from a glance to real people what they can hope to find on the rest of the site.

2) So that as few clicks as possible are required to get to the desired information.

3) So that search engines can follow the links to the rest of the pages in your web site and index them.

Avoid the use of splash pages that have no text or page links to the rest of your site. These pages make it more difficult for search engines to index and rank the site, and they require people to make extra clicks and waste time to find out if your site is relevant to their search; moreover, they often negatively affect load time.

Making an Impact

Of course you want your site to look good and you want your home page to “make an impact”. But think carefully about what kind of “impact” the home page is actually making. Do you want your visitors to think, “Wow what an awesome web site? I wonder who the designers are?” Or do you want them to think, “Wow that is exactly the product or service I have been looking for! I am going to buy it right now!”

Where you may go wrong is thinking that potential clients are impressed with flash movies, animations, music, and other such bells a
nd whistles, when in reality most people are more impressed, in a useful way, by a web site that loads fast, has well organized and complete information, and offers the product or service they want under favourable terms. -Really!

The one page web site. Better now than later.

In some cases a Home page may be all you need. Especially when you do not have the time or the budget to have a larger web site. It is better to have a one-page web site done now, than to wait six months or longer to have a larger web site created.

These days a web site is often used for simple look-up purposes. Does this company exist? 

Do they have/do what I need? 

Where is it? 

How do I contact them? 

A well-crafted home page can provide all of this information and at a very reasonable cost.

Additionally if you are planning to have a web site at some point in the future (and why wouldn’t you?) then having a one page web site will give you a head start with the search engines (who can take up to four months to index a new site).

For more information visit: www.back2front.ca

by Candace Carter, Back2Front-The Web Site People

What can you give me when I ask, what is a Home Page? Now, let’s say that a web site is a hotel, and its home page stands as the hotel’s receptionist. Now the hotel isn’t that famous as those 5 star ones, but it does provide the same superb services as those 5 star hotels do. And it does have all the marketing tactics such as banners, posters, and other marketing strategies in place for the hotel to get known for what services they can provide.

Now when customers come in, the first thing that they’ll be seeing is the hotel’s receptionist, now it’s up to the receptionist to convey the necessary information that these customers wanted. And if the receptionist fails in providing these information, then the hotel will certainly loose their customers.

No matter how good the hotel looks like or how good the quality of their services is, with a receptionist that can’t provide the necessary information the customer wanted with that hotel, then all will be for nothing. These also go with websites and their home pages. If the home page cannot provide the information the visitor wanted at first glance, then there is a huge chance that the visitor will leave.

Now I’ve been visiting countless websites already, and just like what Thomas Edison said when he discovered the light bulb, “I found 1000 ways not to build a light bulb”, I also found several ways on how home pages can ruin a web site.

What’s This About Again?

Ok, the first thing about home pages should do is to convey information to visitors at first glance. But some of the sites I’ve visited recently lacked in this area.

The design of the web site may be important in some ways that it could catch certain attention, but the information within that design is what’s more important. The first content anyone sees on your home page is the most critically valuable, for usability and as well as SEO. It’s important for visitors visiting the site or the page for the first time to easily understand what the deal is, and if they’re in the right place.

Some home pages don’t mention what the site’s about at all. So what are you meant to do when you land on one of these pages? You don’t want to have to deduce or guess what’s going on. Your only driving motive is to figure out “Am I in the right place to get what I’m looking for?”

So it is very important that this question must be answered upon the first time users gain access to a web site.

Don’t be tempted to try and retain people on your site who are actually looking for something else. They’re not going to stick around very long, and by not putting your wares on show first-up, the overall success rate will decrease because you’ll risk losing the people who have turned up to get what you’re offering.

Letting the visitors know about your website is quite simple really. All it takes is for your home page to have what your business is about, on what your business do, and from whom. And from there, the entire question will be answered a lot quicker, positively or negatively.

Check out what the Web design Philippines has to provide to make your web site more approachable and accessible. Visit the Web design Philippines with Optimind Technology Solutions.

Is This a Dead End?

Dead ends in a website are common on some sites that I’ve visited. And these dead ends can only produce a lot of frustration and annoyance for a lot of visitors.

The common dead ends that I’ve experienced are those with the “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” placeholder. If you’re trying to discourage visitors to visit your site again, then this is the proper way of doing it. Just think like a user visiting your site for a second here, what will you feel when you visit a site that has the “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” placeholder on a page where you know the information that you need is in it? Disappointed? Well you will be really disappointed and annoyed by that. And visitors would likely think that the site isn’t finished enough to provide them with the information that they needed, and you wouldn’t want that happening.

Its more preferable if ever that you build a web site, and a certain page would only be updated after 5 years, then its much more preferable if you don’t make that link in your home page to that page. If you do, visitors would likely to find more disappointments when they click on that button, and that they’ll likely to not visit your site again within 5 years.

Check out what the Web design Philippines has to provide to make your web site more approachable and accessible. Visit the Web design Philippines with Optimind Technology Solutions.

Do I Get What I Want Here?

Apart from the goals of your web site, it’s also important that we take into mind the goals of the visitors visiting your site. Now why should the visitor care about your web site if they could just visit other?

Always remember that visitors visiting your web site have their own agenda in visiting your web site. May it be for fun or for information gathering. Whatever it may be, visitors have their own goals in visiting your website, and they want to get it fast.

The best way for you to achieve your goal is to help your visitors achieve theirs. This in turn will make your visitors come back again, or link your site, or recommend your site to others. This strategy is commonly called the win/win tactics, keeping people on the site by giving them what they want long enough for the site to get what it wants.

Check out what the Web design Philippines has to provide to make your web site more approachable and accessible. Visit the Web design Philippines with Optimind Technology Solutions.

Wow! That Looks Nice!

If you would notice, when we build home pages, we always put a lot of images, graphics, animations, and other things in it, but have you really thought of why we do this? Yes. To convey to the visitors the information about your web site and what your web site can do for them. But sometimes, these effect cant quiet get the necessary information to convey to the visitors.

Simply putting images or graphics or animations on your home page are not enough to let them know what you do or what you provide. Text has its own strengths, able to convey information very quickly and accurately. Imagery, too, can impart a rich combination of “soft” info, or a high-level of complex info in the form of a graph, chart, or diagram.

But when you’re constructing a home page that really grabs hold of your visitors, the selection of images and graphics must be credible.

A perfect example for this is a use of some generic photos such as a photo of a great shipyard on your home page. If the business of that website doesn’t actually have a great shipyard chuck full of storage ships, then don’t put that. Credibility is the first thing that visitors would want with a web site. You should always think of the saying, “What You See Is What You Get” when building a web site.

Check out what the Web design Philippines has to provide to make your web site more approachable and accessible. Visit the Web design Philippines with Optimind Technology Solutions at www.myoptimind.com .