Mistakes on Your Website Homepage

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Web Copywriting Tune-Up Kit

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The 5 Biggest Mistakes Service Professionals Make With Their Homepage

These mistakes are made by the majority of service professionals and really have a negative effect on your homepage. Are you guilty of making any of them?

1. Not immediately letting your visitors know what benefit they'll receive from visiting your website.

When a visitor first visits your webpage you've got about 5 to 10 seconds to grab their attention. You need to tell them "what's in it for them" - what benefit they'll receive from visiting your website.

Unfortunately the large majority of service professionals have websites that don't immediately address their prospects needs, wants and opportunities.

In turn your visitors don't find anything useful or helpful; they leave your site, go back to the search results and then visit your competition's website... never to return again.

The best place to let your visitors know what benefit your website gives them is with your headline.

Most service professionals have headlines which are generic and bland like...

"ACME Partners Website" or "Welcome to ACME Partners Website."

These headlines don't get your prospects' attention or offer them any benefit to make them want to read on. The purpose of a headline is to make your prospects want to read the next line of your copy (the words on your website). The above headlines just don't effectively achieve that purpose.

Use a self interest headline that appeals to your visitors. Offer your visitors something they want - something you can give them.

Something like...

"How you can increase your income by more than 17% and be financially free within 6 years."

"How you can own the home of your dreams... and save thousands of dollars at the same time."

"Don't choose a property lawyer until you've read these conveyance tips... they'll save you time, money and grief."

These headlines all give benefits and immediately let your visitors know how you and your website can help them.

2. Talking only about YOU - and not concentrating on YOUR PROSPECTS' goals and problems.

Most service professionals have homepages that say something like this...

Welcome to ABC Lawyers Website

ABC Lawyers is Smallville's biggest law firm. We've been operating since 1953 and we specialise in all types of law - from criminal law to property law to civil law. We pride ourselves on our quality and service and we are the most respected law firm in the state. Our friendly lawyers are experienced in the most difficult aspects of law and we strive for excellence.

Blah, blah, blah.

Your prospects are saying "I didn't visit your website to only hear about how good you think you are... What's in it for me?

Save all that self-absorbed garbage for your 'About Us' section of your website... I don't really care. If I wanted to read all about you, then I'd visit that section of your website."

Concentrate on your prospects. Talk about their problems, their goals, their opportunities, their needs, their wants, the benefits of your service for them, and how you can help them.

Here's something better...

Have you been injured at work...?

How you can quickly access the compensation you deserve... without the expensive legal bills and lengthy court process.

If you've been injured at work and want an affordable and friendly personal injury lawyer to help you receive compensation, then I want you to read every word on this webpage.

Why? Because I'd like to show you how you can achieve a fair compensation for you and your family, with a minimum of emotional and financial stress.

Notice how the second bit of copy (the writing on your website) actually speaks directly to your prospects, and would easily get the attention and interest of the prospect (in this case an injured worker).

Look at your website's copy right now. Tally up how many "I/me/we/us" words you have compared to your "you/your" words. As a rule of thumb, you should have at least twice as many "you/your" words than "I/me/we/us" words.

Your website should be about your target market/prospects/clients (because they are the ones who pay for your service)... not all about you.

3. Not having a way to capture your prospects email address or contact details.

You're dreaming if you think your first time visitors will come to your website, look around, and then want to immediately throw open their wallets and buy your services.

Most services are intangible and people rarely buy services on impulse. When selling your services it often takes a minimum of five quality interactions with your prospects before they trust you enough to explain their situation with you and start working with you.

What's happening in the real world is your visitors are coming to your website, then briefly looking around, then leaving... never to return again.

Whilst it might not be so drastic if you have some unique and quality content on your site; the truth is most of your prospects are leaving and never coming back - not because your website is necessarily bad - but because once a prospect leaves your site you're "out of sight, out of mind."

Humans are naturally quite selfish. We think about ourselves 95% of the time. We don't suddenly wonder how you and your business are going, or about how your new service can really help us.

If you don't have a way to capture the email addresses of your visitors on your homepage, you're barely going to be in contact with your visitors once, let alone the five times needed to gain their trust.

You need to be in contact with your prospects so they can learn to trust you, otherwise you may never get another chance to get their attention.

The best way to get your visitor's email address is to offer an email newsletter where you give your prospects and visitors valuable educational articles that show them how to solve their problems and make the most of their opportunities.

Over time your informational articles will plant a seed in your prospects minds. They'll perceive you as an expert, they'll come to like you, they'll believe that you can help them with their situation and they'll eventually come to you when they want and need your help.

Have a look at my website: I allow my visitors to sign up for my email newsletter that contains information on how to make their websites more profitable. Every couple of weeks I give my subscribers information that doesn't hawk my services, but gives them information that they can put to use that will help them.

When a visitor first comes to my website, 9 times out of 10, he or she will sign up for my newsletter, and I will have an opportunity to build a rapport and trust with that prospect. It is a lot better than someone visiting my site once and never returning.

You need a sign up form on your website where you can offer a free valued report or newsletter (or both) in return for you prospects email address or contact details.

4. Not having an effective title

Your homepage's title is one of the most important elements of your homepage with regards to getting a good search engine ranking. Unfortunately most service professionals have titles that are underutilised.

For those of you who don't know what your website's title is, view your website in your web browser, and your title will be displayed in the very top corner of your monitor.

Ok, now that we know what a title is let's see if you've got a good one...

Let's say you lived in Smallville and you needed an accountant. What would you type in your search engine?

Chances are you type in 'Accountants in Smallville' or 'Smallville Accountants' or 'Accountancy services in Smallville.'

If you're a local service professional (i.e. the majority of your clients are people from your local area), it is very important that you rank well with the above phrases that correspond with your business.

I suggest you go to Google and type in what you do and where you live (e.g. 'architects beverly hills').

If you don't rank in the top 5 or 10 rankings, then you may need to adjust your title.

Now having an effective title is not the be-all-and-end-all of getting your homepage to rank well in the search engines, but the fact remains that if you don't have a title that says who you are, what you do and which area you are located you could be potentially losing thousands of qualified leads a year.

I see a lot of service professionals that have meaningless titles such as 'Welcome to XYZ Lawyers' or even worse 'fancy' titles like '.:- XYZ Lawyers -:.'; these companies are losing a lot of potential business just by ignoring the fact that their title weighs heavily in getting a good search engine ranking.

Now if you don't rank in the top ten for you chosen profession and location I suggest you start improving your search engine ranking by changing your title.

If you're a local service professional, start with your name, then your profession, followed by your location. If you've got space left over, either add more keywords or use your tagline.

Something like...

'Andy's Architects, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles - helping you build your dream home, without breaking the budget.'

'XYZ Property Lawyers, Manhattan, New York - property legal services, conveyancing, contracts.'

In the first example we are targeting the phrases 'Architects Beverly Hills', 'Beverly Hills Architects', 'Architects Los Angeles' etc, etc whilst at the same time separating ourselves from the other results with help from our tagline.

In the second example we are still targeting 'Property Lawyers Manhattan' et al, but also 'property legal services Manhattan', 'conveyancing Manhattan', 'property contracts Manhattan' etc, etc.

For professionals who work on a national and an international level, having your location in your title isn't as important, but now that you know of the power of titles make sure that your title ranks well in phrases that your prospects will enter.

Either way, it's estimated that 80% of all traffic on the internet comes from search engines. So having an effective title will help increase the number of prospects who will visit your website.

5. Not having a positive testimonial to help build credibility

As service professionals we all know the power of a good testimonial or referral; but I'm still amazed when I browse through hundreds of service professionals' websites and see so many sites without a strong, positive testimonial on the homepage.

In this day and age our visitors are so accustomed to every company telling them that their product or service is the best. You need to have proof from a third party that what you're saying is true; that you can help your prospects with their problems and that you've helped others like them in the past.

Testimonials from your existing satisfied clients will help remove doubt from the minds of hesitant prospects, and will instantly build credibility when placed on your homepage.

Put a testimonial on your homepage. Put a specific results based testimonial that supports what you've been saying in your homepage copy.

Something like '"We were very happy with the quality and service we got from XYZ Partners" from Mary and John' just doesn't cut it anymore. You need something specific and believable like...

'"Jason and the team at XYZ Partners were a pleasure to deal with, we'd been to other financial advisors and they just didn't listen to us at all. Jason went above and beyond our expectations; he listened to us carefully, explained confusing concepts to us in plain English and tailored an exclusive plan that really catered for our needs. The results we've got have just been amazing, we've seen our superannuation go up by 19%. That'll be another $7,912 a year we'll be able to live on after we've retired. We couldn't be happier. Thanks Jason!" Sue and Michael Harris, Noosa, Queensland.'

Attach a photo of Sue and Michael and you've got one powerful (and believable) testimonial.

Hopefully his article has made you aware of some of the problems with your homepage, but more importantly given you a few ideas on how to improve it for you and your clients.