Writing Effective Copy for Your Homepage

Whenever I'm looking for products or services on the web, I always come across websites that have ineffective homepages. That's because there are far too many businesses out there that fail to make the most of their homepages - rather than entice visitors and encourage them to buy, the copy simply provides a bit of background information about the business and what the business does. This is a waste of a homepage, because it isn't doing anything to promote their goods and services or to connect with the visitor. And if it doesn't engage the audience, chances are they will just click away from the site and take their business elsewhere.

To make the most of your website, you need to understand what your visitors expect to find on it:

1. Confirmation that they are in the right place for the services or products they want.
   
   
2. Quality and Value - they want to know that your products and services are up to the high standards they expect and are available within their budget
   
   
3. Choice - Not always an issue, but if you stock or provide a wide range of goods and services, customers need to know
   
   
4. Trust. Your visitors need to know that they can trust you to provide high quality products and services and conduct business in a professional way.

They are not particularly interested in who your staff are (unless you are selling their skills) and they're probably not visiting your site to find out about the history of your business. Sure, you can publish this information on your website and it can help to generate a level of trust, but unless your history is your unique selling point (or at least a major selling point), it doesn't belong on your homepage.

As with all copywriting, it is the benefits to the reader that need to be emphasised. And the copy you use to highlight the benefits of your goods and services needs to be engaging, easy to understand, and enticing, so that the visitor stays on your site and makes the effort to read your homepage.

As a trained and experienced copywriter, I produce web copy, including SEO copy, that promotes your business effectively and involves your visitors in your message. Using carefully crafted sentences, I can persuade and reassure your visitors that your products and services are right for them, and can make the copy enagaging and easy to understand.

So if your web site needs copy that captures the attention and actively encourages customers to buy (without resorting to forecful hard-sell techniques), please contact me via http://www.straygoat.com.

Craig Wright
Copywriter, Web Copywriter, SEO Copywriter, Technical Author
StrayGoat Copywriting