Remember what I pointed out in Part 1: 

A visitor to your site is actively looking for specific answers to specific questions.  The two biggest questions they have when searching are: 

1.      Do you do what I am searching for?

2.      Why should I choose you?

Most sites we have seen spend all of their time on question #1 and forget #2 or bury it deep within the site. (on the about us or services page). This is a major mistake.

Some other important considerations for your home page - you have 2-3 seconds to grab their attention:

• The phone number and email address should be easily found - upper right hand corner seems to be the place of choice today.
• Your list of services should be easy to spot or find.
• Some images and if you can do it without it being distracting - a slide show of 3 or 4 images with links to your portfolio.
• Links to your blog (if you have one), your Facebook page (if you have one), white papers etc are all good to have.
• Make it easy to scan - use bullets and short paragraphs

Other Must Haves

FAQ - this is often left off - a well thought out FAQ will move your buyer much closer to calling you - think about all the questions people ask when they meet you - answer those on the site and you will spend a lot less time in your initial meetings

Images - great images alone won't make someone call you but the lack of great images may make them cross you off their list. All good companies have some great images - use them and include descriptions if there is any doubt about what is the image.

Some things to avoid with images:

• Images that dominate the page - "I expect you to have great pictures" - I want to know why I should call you - we have seen sites where the images literally took up almost the entire space you could see upon landing on the home page. This is a big mistake.
• Flash - This rarely works and is more likely to make people quickly hit the back button or close the page - this is especially annoying if people have to wait to have it load - more people will leave than stay while they load.

Make your site easy for the visitor to find the answers to the questions they have.  Getting too caught up in graphics,  bells and whistles on your site makes it too hard for a visitor to find what they're looking for and they click away.... never to been seen again.

Next week - how to create copy that will differentiate your company.

Until Next Tme,

-Mike Jeffries
866-926-5100