Jay LeonardEvery time my team and I launch a new product (which, incidentally, we just did again in March 2012), we usually spend the first 3-4 months revising the home page over and over and over again. We A/B test. We use heatmapping and click tracking apps. We take videos of visitor sessions. And we agonize over what the heck we’re doing so wrong that 38% or 44% or 57% of our users bounce after 30 seconds of scanning our text at warp speed.
Yes, this is the life of a Web marketer, or at least a fraction of a Web marketer’s tortured life. We fret over the smallest things like “Maybe people aren’t clicking on the video button because it’s too dark” or “Maybe people will read the callouts if we use a handwritten font.” Then we test and test until the numbers start to improve, and we move on to another page or project.
After you’ve done this for 10 years, you discover that there are innumerable variables in getting someone to pay attention and respond. However, you also discover a few unchanging principles that work every friggin’ time. Here are five of the latter … ignore them at your own peril.
1. Prominently display a WTF Line
As in “WTF is this site about.” This line should be short (10 words max). It should be highly visible (place it in the top banner or near your logo). And it should say precisely what the site is about. One of the biggest mistakes that many companies make is to try and be so clever and slick that it’s not readily apparent what you are selling. The WTF line ensures this won’t happen to you, because all someone has to do is look at the top of your home page and realize that you are the “world’s largest wholesaler of fake squirrel tails” (or whatever it is your business does).
2. Every photo requires a caption
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a picture without a caption is like a mannequin without clothes. Sure, it can stand on its own, but it’s not nearly as interesting for the viewer. A caption gives an image context and fleshes out the story, and we’ve found that an image with a caption gets more than double the attention compared to just an image.
Here’s how it works. People will scan a page and their eyes will typically stop on the images. If there’s nothing to give the image context, they will simply keep scanning until they hit the next shiny bauble or an item that reflects their interests. But if you place a caption there, they will quickly read it to learn more about the image and if there’s a larger story behind it. Put it this way … if people read nothing else on your home page, they will read the captions next to your images, so if you have things that must be read, put them in captions.
3. Include some sort of social proof
Human beings really are lemmings. We hesitate to act alone and often wait until we view how others will react to a situation before we act ourselves. Case in point … there was no panic when the Titanic was sinking in the icy North Atlantic because the ship’s staff, from the captain to the band that went down playing, exuded an aura of calm and order. They acted like this was business a usual, so everyone else followed in suit even though it was anything but normal.
The same logic applies to people scouting out your wares. If you don’t show that other people use your products or services, if you don’t include quotes and testimonials and photos and videos and Web sites of your customers, then your site visitors may well assume that you’re some fly-by-night operation that can’t be trusted with a credit card number. But if you do show a cross-section of your happy customers and include a few of their words, it puts even the most suspicious people more at ease and they are more receptive to your other messages.
4. Find a fitting analogy
Homepages are like billboards in that you have a few seconds to get your idea across. I write headlines for a living (among other things), and I’ll tell you that it’s incredibly hard to write a concise headline that captures the pith of even the simplest product. (I always tell my marketing clients, “If you want a page of solid marketing copy, give me an hour. If you want a great headline, give me three.”)
This is why analogies work so well. They are already packed with meaning and, as such, give you a shortcut. For example, our latest product is online project management software plus a bunch of other business planning tools packed into one app. We started out saying all that but found people were ignoring our marketing-speak (no surprise there). Then we stumbled across a fitting analogy … we started comparing our online app to a Swiss Army knife and how it unites many tools into one convenient package. Bam … people started getting it and our conversions started to rise.
5. Use a big, rectangular red button for your primary call-to-action
Most sites have a primary action that they want their visitors to take. If you run an online community, it’s “Sign Up Now.” If you have an e-commerce site with a wide selection of stuff, it’s “Find a Product.” If you offer an online app, it’s “Try It Today.”
We’ve used textual links, arrows, violators (i.e., those explosion-esque graphics you see in newspaper car ads … er, that you used to see in newspaper car ads when you still read newspapers) and even crazy graphics (we once used a picture of my black Labrador retriever in a call-to-action link) to get people to act. We have used buttons of practically every size, shape and color, and what works best?
A rectangular red button with a simple, two-to-four word call-to-action. And it works even better when it’s the only splotch of bright red on the page. Simple, straightforward and easy to execute.
So those are five of our home page “must-dos” … what are yours?
About the Author
Jeff Kear is owner of Planning Pod, the one-and-done online business and project management software app for running your small business. It pulls together 22 business-critical tools into one convenient application so you can more easily manage projects, tasks, contacts, calendars, files, contracts, proposals, invoices and much more. Jeff writes a marketing column for the Denver Business Journal and is a 20-year veteran in the advertising and marketing industry, having worked with brands like MetLife, Toyota and Comcast.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Hi Jeff, I like this article. These seem very obvious but very easy to overlook. My question is for Number 4, how would you fit the analogy onto the page? As part of the body copy and graphics? Do you have a link to an example of a home page that follows these 5 principles?
Thanks again!
Robert Scozzari
Hey there Robert – Thanks for your feedback. Yes, they seem obvious, but rarely do you see all these best practices on a home page.
Good question about the analogy. I would try to use both an image and copy/caption for the analogy. Some people respond more to visuals and others to text, so this covers both types of visitors.
As for an example, check our our the home page for Planning Pod, which offers some pretty obvious examples of each of these.
Cheers,
Jeff
Oops … here’s the link:
http://www.planningpod.com/
Jeff, great article. Surprised though by your success with red button. Have seen lots of discussion that red isn’t good because it’s too aggressive and we are trained to associate it with “stop.” For those reasons I have seen green recommended.
Also wondering about post captions. I personally love using and reading them. But, have had issues using them in posts because they interfere with “you might also like” widget at bottom of related posts and also trouble with the “read more” working right. Also think they mess up auto feed of blog post to Facebook.
This is a great article, you are right on. The not thing I would suggest is put a call to action in the image captions. Like you said, people read them, why not just give information there but also give them something they can do to move forward, it can be very powerful for engagement.