Blue Dreamer Blog
Written articles and my personal thoughts on web design, ecommerce, the internet and odd ramblings about life, the universe and everything!
Welcome to my site
Space on your web sites home page is a valuable commodity so why waste it?
The generic “Welcome to my site” message is, in my opinion, a rather pointless message to use. OK, so if you’re running a personal site about your hobby you don’t need to worry about things like customer perception, or convincing the customer to do business with you, but if you want to get noticed it can working against your interests.
Your visitors have probably made a web search to find you, or they’ve come to your site after seeing you mentioned in your advertising or marketing material. They already know what you do, that’s why they’ve come to your site, so why not tell them something useful instead?
The scenario
Let’s say you sell guitars on your site. I do a web search for guitars and see your site listed in the search results, it looks interesting because the results tell me that you sell guitars so I click on the link. The home page loads in my browser and the first thing I read is “Welcome to our site, please feel free to browse around...dah dah dah...”. I’ve then got to start scanning the page again to try and find what I originally visited your site for!
Although that “welcome” is a nice thought it’s not really useful for your visitor.
Grab their attention!
Instead of “welcome to our site” imagine your page heading reads something like “We’ve got your dream guitar - 24 hour delivery!”. My impression is WOW I can have it tomorrow, you’ve sold me the dream and have my full attention. As a result I’m far more likely to have a good look at what guitars you have in stock, and if I’m lucky you’ll have the one I want and I’m strongly tempted to get my credit card out. Failing that I might at least make an enquiry to see if you have what I want but it’s not on the site.
Give your visitors the inspiration they want.
Experiment with attention grabbing headings
If you put your mind to it there are lots of possible headlines you can give your visitors that might just make a difference. Imagine you’re the customer - what headline would really grab your attention? Be creative and try different approaches. Maybe you’re having a clearance sale or running a promotion - headlines like “10% off all orders this month” or “Free shipping when you spend £50” get noticed straight away and inspire web shoppers.
Now go and make some sales!
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