If your visitor doesn’t see what they want on your website right away – that back button is where their cursor is hovering. Knee-jerk reaction ‘This site isn’t what I’m looking for’ – and they’ve gone!
That means you need to think long and hard about what that first screen shows them. And not just on your home page, but on all your core pages. You never know where they’ll land, it depends on what they’ve searched for as to where the search engine or AI assistant sends them.
What do you need to pay attention to?
Your brand banner
Make sure your logo is clear (not the size of a micro dot) and recognisable. You might need to work with your graphic designer to create a version that works on a website.
Put your contact details top right, phone and email, to make it easy for people who just want to get in touch. Don’t make them have to work hard to find how to contact you. Also, while people do use their mobiles to access the web, there are still a substantial number who are searching from a desktop – putting a ‘phone us’ button, doesn’t work on a desktop! If you want to make phoning from a mobile easy, put the button, but make the number visible too.
A note about navigation: Ask your web designer to make the navigation ‘float’, so it stays in view as people scroll down. That means they don’t have to scroll all the way back to the top to explore further.
Image
I’m not a fan of ‘eye-candy’ images, only there to make the page look pretty. However, an image at the top of each web page makes engagement much easier. Choose images that are relevant to your business – ideally, to the content of the page they’re on. So, for instance, if you’re in the transport business, an office of friendly looking people on the phone isn’t going to help – you need pictures of your vehicles.
Sometimes web designers will add a scrolling marquee – a series of images that automatically change after a couple of seconds. I understand that you may have more than one message to share, but how many people will sit and wait for three or four images to appear? Most people are not that patient! Places to go, people to see – no time to sit and stare.
The other downside to moving images is that, if they’re still visible as your visitor starts to scroll down, every time the image moves their attention is drawn to the image – and they stop exploring. That can mean they don’t really get your message as they don’t read enough before their attention is diverted.
If they’re not getting it – they’ve hit the back button and are looking for an ‘easier’ website.
Headline
The core headline on the page needs to tell the reader ‘you’re in the right place’. That means you need to thoroughly understand your ideal customer. What is the biggest problem that you solve for them? What kind of outcomes do they get from working with you? That’s what your headline and your subheader needs to tell them.
Again, this applies to every core page.
This is where AI can help. If you give it your customer profile in as much detail as possible and ask for powerful headline suggestions for your website – tell it which page, it will give you some options. All you have to do is ensure that whichever you choose sounds authentically you.
Call to action
Some people choose to have a ‘take action’ button in their first screen. If you decide to do that think carefully what you really want people to do before they go any further.
If this is the first thing they see – don’t ask them to sign up to your newsletter, you haven’t shown your value yet, so that is wasting prime real estate.
If you do add an action button, just ONE. Not two or three – and yes, I’ve seen this in websites that are live.
It’s probably a bit early to ask people to call you, as they won’t have all the information they need to make that decision yet. The first screen’s job is to engage and retain, not to pitch.
There’s plenty more to a successful web page, but this is just the first screen! If you don’t get it right – that visitor has already gone.
