7 steps to the perfect home page

OK – there isn’t one perfect home page!  It depends on your business and the purpose of your website.  However, there are some key dos and don’ts that apply to most websites.

1: People need to get what’s on offer quickly – that means that your banner and your headline need to work hard for their place on your prime real estate.  When people see the image and the headline do they immediately think “Yes, that’s what I’m looking for.”  Or do they have to scroll down to find out if you’ve got what they are hoping to find?

2: Every headline must grab the reader’s attention.  So, they need to be focused on your visitors pain and gain.  The message should feature the problems your reader is suffering from and/or what life will be like with their problems fixed.  Writing compelling headlines is an art that takes hard work to get right.

3: Your introduction should be short, reader-focused and tell people how to get what they want.

4: Show your visitor what’s on offer and make it easy to get to more information.  If you have three or four core offerings, provide a one line summary and a big fat clickable button or box.  This is especially important for mobile users as clicking a piece of highlighted text is often literally a hit or miss experience.

5: Don’t forget a call to action.  Tell people what to do – and make it easy for them to do it.  If you don’t ask them to do something, there is a surprisingly large percentage who will simply do nothing!

6: Make sure that there are great images – but they must be included for a good reason – not just because you need to liven the page up with some visuals.  Ideally, where text and images are alongside each other the text goes to the left and the image to the right.  If in columns or boxes – image at the top, text underneath OR headline, image, text from top to bottom.

7: When you’ve added all the key important information to allow people to get what they want quickly, maybe add a link and image to your About page and the most recent blog articles, or other information you want people to look at.

Then TEST

Think about what you want people to do when they visit your website.  Now give the test home page to half a dozen existing or potential customers with a list of what you want them to do and ask them for feedback on how easy they found it.  E.g. Find out how to purchase green widgets or find out what sort of service packages are available. 

This is invaluable as it allows you to ‘see’ your website from the user’s perspective.  Don’t fall into the trap of asking your friends and family to test your site – they’ll either love it (because they love you) or be unnecessarily critical.  If they’re not your ideal client, they won’t have the right objectives.

Slide right in!

If you’re making a presentation to get an idea, a concept across or to persuade your audience to take action on something, sometimes words are not enough. 

As the saying goes ‘a picture says a thousand words’, some things are just easier to explain with the aid of an image.  Diagrams, charts, product images are all great aids to your presentation.

A good slide deck is worth its weight in gold, but there are some vital things to remember.

The slide deck is a visual aid – not a verbal aid

It should not be your notes on screen.  Firstly, because you should not be reading the screen as you lose contact with your audience.  Secondly, because text-heavy slides divert attention from you to the slides.  Some of your audience will read and re-read your slides, instead of listening to you. 

Keep it simple

Images need to be simple and easy to understand.  If it takes you ten minutes to explain your diagram, it’s not a good visual aid.  Bar charts and pie charts that show clear differentials are great, but don’t get too complicated.  A month-by-month growth chart, with nice fat bars, is much easier for your audience to process than a day-by-day version, with dozens of tiny lines.

Don’t go to the other extreme and put images on the screen with no explanation.  If you’re putting a graph up, add the title and the designation of your vertical and horizontal values – at least.

This also means NOT using fancy fonts.  A simple sans-serif font is the easiest on the audience’s eyes.  Ensure text is big enough to be read from a distance, don’t make your audience work too hard to decipher your message.

Quality over quantity

Every slide must work for its place.  80 slides for a 10 minute presentation is far too many! (And yes, I’ve seen this.  The presenter, could almost not have been present, he just clicked from slide to slide and everything was on the screen.)  Pare your slides down to the essentials.

Words have a place

There’s nothing wrong with the (very) occasional quotation, as long as it has value in your presentation.

Sometimes, if you have a step-by-step process, including the steps will help the audience to get that process accurately.  My own rule of thumb is no more than three one-line bullet points on a single slide.

e.g.

•  Write a 300 word article for your blog
• Take soundbites to use for social media
• Use the article to lead your newsletter with value

I would use a graphic to demonstrate, so the slide would look like this:

Stay in control

When you’re not talking about a slide turn it off!  When there is information on a screen people tend to re-read, re-examine and are not concentrating on the speaker.  If you hit B on your keyboard, the screen will go black – and do it again and you’re back on your slides.  (W makes the screen go white, but that often means you end up as a backlit silhouette!).  Some clickers have an option for a blank screen too.

A well-designed slide deck will help to keep your audience engaged and underline your key points professionally.  Most slide builders will offer help with structure and design – or use an AI aid like Gamma.

Keep in mind that you are the presenter, not your slide-deck, so ensure that the focus is on you.