Websites are not retail shopfronts. There are no soy candles burning, no arty lighting, no complimentary cranberry iced tea. And, most importantly, there’s no Jessica-with-the-crazy-nails saying, “Welcome to our store! Can we get you anything today?”
When writing the very first headline that your visitors will read, don’t be tempted to welcome visitors to your website. Don’t say hi!, welcome to my world, or Enter Here. Close the laptop. And think about how many opportunities you could miss.
Someone landed on your website for a reason. So give them a reason to stay.
When writing your tightly-written homepage headline, you must include these 3 vital elements:
What does your business do?
What are the benefits to your customers?
What keywords are people using when typing in search phrases?
At Mity Digital, we always urge our clients to spend time on truly effective, well-written headlines including the above 3 points. If you don’t do this you run the risk of people typing a search query, clicking on a result, then clicking the back button and clicking on a different site. Rand Fishkin calls this ‘pogo sticking’.
He says: “This signals to search engines you didn’t provide an answer, or provided a bad experience. Too many of these and you’ll move farther down the search rankings.”
You and your web designer probably worked hard to get people as far as your homepage. If visitors are still confused about what you do after looking at your homepage, you’ve not only thrown all that hard work away but your headline is throwing them off.
So sit down and get cracking. Written a great one? Fab. Now write another 5 headlines. Then another 5. Get all the bad ones out, then the good ones will come. Have you thought about keywords other than the ones off the top of your head? Check out a (free) generator like keywordtool.io, which finds the keywords and phrases related to your business that everyone is using.
If you can create a direct headline on the homepage of your clean, well-designed site, you’re not only well on the way to people clicking on your homepage, but also stopping to look around.
Mity Digital does not welcome you to this website in the slightest. But we do get the best from your website with results-driven web design and development. Call us on 1300 134 415.
Michael Scruse
Michael brings his technical, web and sales expertise to every project, backed by over 30 years’ experience in the IT industry.
Michael is also a qualified chef, although cooking is now in a domestic kitchen. Michael is a bit of a history buff and is currently researching his own family history.
