Day 2: Imagining Your Website
When visitors land on a website, they want certain questions answered right away.
- “Did I land on the right website?”
- “Do you understand my problem?”
- “Can you solve it?”
- “Can I trust you?”
- “How can I get in touch with you (and how easily)?”
- “How much does your service/product cost?”
How quickly and how well you can answer these questions will help you convert more visitors into prospects. And answering them on one page, the home or a landing page, saves them the time and effort of digging around, reducing the chances of them leaving your site.
While there is no exact formula for guaranteed success, high-converting home pages on websites of successful businesses typically have the following elements:
- A banner with a high quality-image of ideal client, idealized product or yourself, and a headline and description identifying the ideal client followed by a clear call-to-action (CTA)
- CTAs throughout the page, including call-to-action sections with little text and design emphasis on the button or form
- Testimonials, including and especially video case studies
- Other social proof, like certifications, badges, awards, features in the media
- Problems you solve
- Brief description of services, i.e. the solutions you offer
- Easy process or steps to take to work with them
- Clear, uncluttered menu that possibly includes a Pricing page
Additional Sections
- FAQs
- Profile video of the founder or CEO
- Profile pictures of your team
Of course, you can find exceptions; not all accomplished businesses have all these elements on their home page or website and certainly not in the same order.
Let me show you two examples of high-converting pages from businesses to illustrate the importance of having at least some of these elements (and SEO to bring in the web traffic in the first place).
BetterUp
BetterUp, a professional coaching and development platform for companies, made $175 million in revenue in 2022, so we can definitely learn some lessons from this landing page design.
The Banner
The landing page starts with a captivating image of a serene woman, and a succinct headline that explains the results of choosing BetterUp – improving your life – and a sub-headline and description that explains how BetterUp will fulfill its promise, with a specific type of coaching.
They also have a call-to-action that is low-commitment and simple, not intimidating or multi-step, because it’s so easy to give your email address.
You want either an image of a happy client (real or fictive) or another subject that conveys the dream scenario related to your product or service. Or you want a professional shot of yourself if you’re in consulting or another field that’s more about a personal brand.
Problems & Solutions
BetterUp tackles both problems and solutions in one section, explaining how they can relieve burnout, stress and other such conditions and how you’ll achieve certain indicators of health and wellness like work-life balance, a meaningful life, and so on.
Testimonial
The blue section showcases a review that illustrates exactly the kind of results a new prospect wants to achieve with coaching.
Process & Services
BetterUp demonstrates how easy it is to find a coach with just 3 steps using their app, and further down, they explain 3 steps of what will happen once you share your email address.
The profile video of the coaches also helps build trust.
More Social Proof
BetterUp shares statistics of how successful they’ve been with helping other clients.
Educational Sections
Not every visitor is ready to buy, so including your latest 3 blog posts like BetterUp does or a link to your portfolio page, for example, encourages them to learn more about you so they can build up the trust they need to make that small or bigger commitment you want them to.
Secondary CTA
If you want to encourage users to take another but less important action, like a donation, it’s best to add that at the bottom or even keep it to its own page, because you want your visitor to focus on your primary offerings.
GTA Professional Accounting
My second example is a small business, an accounting firm.
While their design is not as clean-cut and modern as BetterUp, a big business that has a much bigger marketing budget, they’ve been successful enough to open up three offices across the GTA.
The Banner
See how GTA Professional Accounting does not include an image of a person, either the happy client or CEO? Yet the background of Toronto still works because it immediately tells the visitor who’s looking for a Toronto firm that they’ve landed in the right place.
Notice the bright orange color of the CTA button that makes it impossible to miss. It’s always best to choose a bold accent color, not neutral tones that fade into the background.
Other Social Proof
Right after the banner, you discover how trusted and well reputed they are because they showcase the recognition they received in The Star and on Clutch.
Solutions & Services
They don’t really focus on problems, which I suppose an accounting firm can get away with since they provide essential services that obviously every business needs. But they do detail specific services, each of which could appeal to different visitors at different times.
Call-to-Action Section
This section with the background picture establishes a darker tone that makes the light blue button pop, calling the user’s attention.
Reviews
What’s cool about using the carousel display is that it allows the user to click on each individual review to read more, so that they can quickly get a sense of how popular your products or services are and why they’re so highly rated among many customers.
On top of that, they’ve got video testimonials, which is the best kind of review. Collect as many of those as you can. Even if your visitors don’t watch them, just seeing them on your site impresses upon them that your offerings are good enough for your clients to take time out of their busy days to sing your praises on camera.
Team Profile
Nothing personalizes a website more than photos of the people who work there, immediately building trust. The only thing that builds more trust is a profile video of you sharing your expertise.
Target Clients
Personally, I would have put this section higher or added its details to the banner, but certainly somewhere you should specify whom your ideal customers are. This can also help you avoid wasting time with those who aren’t the right fit.
The Software Partners sections also encourages prospects to self-identify as the ideal client because seeing QuickBooks in the list might make a visitor feel like GTA Professional Accounting will have a great understanding of their problems.
Educational Sections
GTA Professional Accounting not only includes blogs, but also tutorial videos for those not willing to contact them just yet.
FAQs
FAQs are great for anticipating all the obstacles and objections a visitor might have without them having to search your whole site for the answers, so they feel like they have no excuse not to contact you.
This is a great place to tackle questions about costs; tell them about deals, discounts or free trials; explain why you’re different than competitors; redirect them to other pages on your site with the answers; and anything else relevant but in bite-sized pieces that are quick to understand.
Map
Like the background picture of Toronto, the map makes it very clear to the web visitor searching in Toronto that GTA Professional Accounting is a local firm and makes it easy for the user to determine how quickly he or she can reach the office.
As you can see, not all high-converting landing pages follow the exact same layout, but they have some fundamental elements in common.
Two Pieces of Advice
Plan to Get the Content You Don’t Have
Don’t worry if you don’t have all the content yet to create these sections for your home page because if you’re just starting or a solopreneur, understandably it’ll take time. But these sections on your home page are what you should aspire to for your own website.
A website is not a static product that you pay for once, and you’re done.
If you want your website to work for you, generating leads, you need to invest the time and money to continuously update and improve it to reflect your most effective marketing messages, which can change over time; your growth; and your accomplishments.
Find Websites to Emulate
Check out the sites of successful competitors in your industry, even the big brands, and study what makes their webpages so effective.
- What sections do they have?
- What language do they use that’s so persuasive?
- How do they describe their offerings to make them more appealing?
- If you really want to compete, analyze their marketing tactics: discounts, guarantees, free stuff, bonuses, urgency, etc. Can you match or exceed them?