Boy is it easy to make mistakes on a homepage! I bet you’ve seen a ton of them—from typos and grammatical errors to copy that just seems to go on and on. And the interesting thing is that bad homepages are not limited to small companies or solopreneurs. They’re pretty much universal. Over the years, I’ve seen homepages—and other pages, too—that would make corporate giants blush.
One of my favorite marketing writers, Ivan Levison, has a few choice words about bad home pages:
You ask a new or return visitor too much about themselves instead of offering “something of real value for free.” Actually, I haven’t seen this on a home page, so I’ll take Mr. Levison’s word for it. But I sure have seen it on the landing pages you’re routed to when you request a white paper or e-book.
You indulge in “vacuous copy.” Mr. Levison wants companies to drop the pompous rhetoric and explicit mission statements in favor of content that’s fresh, lively, and contemporary. I get that, but I’ve seen enough self-consciously hip homepages to recommend that you tone it down a bit.
Your copy features non-sequiturs. That is, it’s “weak and flabby” and doesn’t flow logically. Now, everyone is bemoaning the loss of language skills, but, as Mr. Levison points out, your visitors know that something’s wrong with your copy, even if they can’t pinpoint what it is.
Now, IMHO, bad homepages are a lot like bad elevator pitches. Though we may groan about crafting and presenting ours, most of us have one. And some are quite good. Crisp and focused, they tout what we can do for our clients, not how wonderful we are. (Let’s leave that for Facebook, eh?) I think bad homepages, like bad elevator pitches, may spring from anxiety. We talk a good game about branding and messaging, but we’re still not really sure what to say. So we get something up there. We tell our visitors too much—forgetting that they’ll give us about 8 seconds before moving—on, and we hope that will fly.
Far better, I think, to create a homepage the same way we create a good elevator pitch. Think about what your visitors are likely to be interested in and then ruthlessly refine your message until it’s clear and fast-moving.
Photo Credit: Pavel Ignatov — 123rf.com
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