This is Mikel with TinyFrog Technologies and I would like to talk a little bit about messaging – and more specifically – confusing messaging on your website. The homepage tends to be the most important page on your website. It’s basically a portal that will link people to other pages of the website. If your homepage is developed well, it can act as a very strong lead capture to get someone to contact you through your website. The messaging on your site, specifically on your homepage, is very, very important. The homepage messaging, first of all, needs to be very succinct. If you’re forcing your visitor or user on on the website to read a lot of dense content, you’re probably going to lose them right away.
Think about it: when you get an email that is very long, most people look at that and get frustrated by it. Your website is no different. Often times you have to read those emails, but if someone is landing on your website, they don’t have to be there. The content and even the visuals on your website really need to be designed in such a way to pull someone in and to allow them to develop an emotional connection with your website.
The 4 important things you are looking for when someone lands on your website are:
1) Who you are?
2) What you do?
3) Why they should consider using you?
4) What is the call to action, or what’s the very next thing they should be doing?
Those are the 4 messages or content that needs to be on your website. Everything else is definitely secondary, especially in the most prominent areas of your website or the most prominent areas on your homepage. I would strongly recommend not doing your own homepage messaging yourself. I would strongly recommend getting help from somebody who really knows what they’re doing because that will really make or break your website in terms of whether or not someone decides to stay on your website, and even more importantly if someone decides to contact you through your website.
