The Savvy Seller with Kristen Doyle

169. Is Your Homepage Just a Pretty Welcome Mat That Loses Sales?

• Kristen Doyle, TPT seller, SEO coach, and web designer

Share episode

Send us a text! (Your number stays private)

You’ve got just three to five seconds to capture a visitor’s attention on your website. Miss that window, and they’re gone! In this episode, I share why so many homepages, despite looking beautiful, act like fancy doormats that fail to convert. Using real-world examples, I break down the strategic elements every homepage needs, from clear navigation and compelling headlines to calls to action and social proof, to turn browsers into buyers. I also highlight common mistakes business owners make when aesthetics outweigh strategy and share a quick-check framework to ensure your homepage passes the three-second test!

02:14 – Real-life restaurant website mistakes and missed opportunities

05:51 – Identifying your homepage’s primary purpose for maximum impact

07:20 – Crafting clear navigation and messaging for your ideal customer 

10:33 - Common homepage mistakes to avoid (and what to do instead)

15:54 – What you can do today to improve your homepage

Links & Resources:

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode169 

Tired of worrying about WordPress updates and website maintenance? My worry-free WPCare Plan handles all your updates, security monitoring, and maintenance so you can focus on running your business. My team and I would love to be in your corner, taking your website off your plate.

Learn more and get started at kristendoyle.co/care.

Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Kristen Doyle:

You have got three to five seconds. That's it, three to five seconds, before a visitor decides whether to stay on your website or go looking for someone else. Now I know I've shared this stat before, but it bears repeating, because so many home pages I see are basically just pretty welcome mats that don't do anything to really hook people in. Whether you are offering coaching services, or selling teaching resources, or you're a local brick and mortar, really any kind of business, when someone lands on your homepage, you have seconds to get them hooked before they disappear. Today, I'm sharing some strategic homepage elements that actually convert those visitors into customers, plus the biggest mistakes I see that are costing you sales, including one from one of my favorite local restaurants that's doing so much right inside their restaurant, but almost everything wrong on their website. Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I'm Kristen Doyle, and I'm here to give you no-fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process—things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let's get started, y'all. As a web designer, I am always looking at websites, probably with different things in mind than what the average user does. So I see a lot of home pages across so many different industries that are basically just a pretty welcome mat that doesn't do anything to really hook people in and get them to start taking action in that first three to five seconds. For example, there is a local restaurant near me that I actually really love. It's one of my family's favorite places to go. But when I look at their home page, if I didn't already know, it really is not super clear what they offer, and I have no idea what to do. In fact, even as someone who obviously uses a lot of websites very frequently, the first time I ever went to their website, I was looking for their menu. See, I had already been in to the restaurant and eaten there. I knew we liked it, but we were going to place an order to pick up, and I wanted to take a peek at their menu again and decide what we wanted. And when I first landed on the page, I wasn't even sure where to find their menu. When you load their page, and of course, I'm not going to share who it is, but when you load their website, at the very top there is their logo and their menu. It's really, really small, though, super hard to see, and social media links. That's what you see at the very top in their navigation area. Then the entire top of the homepage, before I scroll is a picture that I know is from their space. They have some outdoor seating, and it's a picture of their outdoor dining space. But the way the picture is taken, it's a really pretty picture, I know why they chose it, but it's not clear what it is. In fact, if I didn't know, just looking at that picture, you wouldn't even be able to tell it's a restaurant. So without context, it's really hard to even tell what that picture is supposed to be telling me. It says nothing about the type of food they serve or what I might experience there. It is literally just a pretty picture. Over the top of that, their restaurant name is there, which that is good and important, and there is a tagline, kind of a description of their space. But to be honest, it's pretty vague. There is nothing else, that's literally it until I scroll. And once you do scroll, the only thing below that is the website footer. Now it does include their phone number and their address, which are super important, obviously, for a local business, but that's it. There is no super obvious link to their menu or events they're having, or anything like that, until you click on the menu link. The mobile version is even worse. Because of that image and the way it's positioned and the coloring on it, you actually can't even read a lot of the text over the image on mobile. So this is a website that definitely could be doing a lot better on the homepage. And the reason I think that this happens a lot of the time is that businesses focus on aesthetics over the strategy. See a lot of times when someone comes to me as a client and is ready to get their website redesigned, they want to immediately talk about how they want their site to look, and they're checking to see if my design style lines up with the vision they have for what their site's going to look like. And that's a big mistake, because the strategy behind it is so much more important than how it looks. And in reality, most web designers are going to be able to adapt to whatever style you want, but the piece that's often missing is that strategy. See if they don't understand the visitor behavior, that three to five second decision window and what people need to see in order to make that decision, they end up treating the homepage more like a brochure or a business card instead of a conversion tool for their business. So let's talk about how to fix that problem, and we do that by having some very strategic elements in place to drive action right from your homepage. The first thing that you need to do is identify your homepage's primary purpose. So for your business, when people land on your homepage, this is probably the first time that they've discovered you, what is the most important thing for them to do? That question drives the entire rest of your homepage. So depending on your business, maybe that purpose, that one action you need them to take is to get people to join your email list, or some other way that you're trying to get their information to generate leads. Maybe you want them to book a free discovery call to work with you. If you're a physical location, a local business, maybe you are hoping to get foot traffic into your store, your restaurant, whatever it is. Maybe you are trying to get people to make a reservation or an appointment with you or place orders online. Maybe you need to drive traffic to a shop if you're an e-commerce business. Regardless of what your business is, though, that primary purpose needs to be identified before you even think about what you want your page to look like or what content goes on it, because that primary goal is what drives everything else about this page. Then once you've figured out that goal, it's time to create those homepage elements that are going to drive the action you want people to take. That starts with really clear navigation options so that people can find what they want. That means the menu at the top of your site, but it also means all the call to action buttons throughout the page. If you have multiple service options or different paths for people to take, those should be really clearly labeled. Back to our restaurant example, maybe those three paths for a restaurant are making a reservation, checking out the menu or ordering online. If you are a digital product seller, it might be three categories of products that you sell, maybe as a service provider, it's three different levels of service that you offer, or different types of services. However, you need to do that for your business, you have to have very clear navigation for people to guide them right to what they need. Beyond those navigation buttons, the headlines and the text on your page are what really is going to speak to your ideal customer and draw them in to your business. So you want to make sure you're highlighting the problem that you solve and what that solution is that you offer. You are including social proof in the form of reviews people have left you, testimonials, anything nice anyone has said about you. And beyond everything else, be sure that you avoid any generic messaging. If the messaging you have written could apply to anyone in your industry or your niche, then it's too generic, and you need to get a lot more specific about talking to your ideal customer. Who are you trying to draw in? Is it that business owner who needs your services to grow her business? Is it that teacher who is struggling and needs your resources to help them in their classroom? Is it that family looking for a fun place to have a night out in your neighborhood? Whatever it is, you need to speak to your exact, specific ideal customer in those headlines and the supporting text throughout your page. Sometimes, when I'm working with clients, I get pushback, especially about what we're putting in the navigation at the top of the site and what we're putting buttons for on the page. In fact, I have been told very recently by one client that they wanted to remove some things from the page because, "people know," is what they told me. People know where to go. If they want this, they'll go in the menu and get it. But the reality is, people just don't. Visitors to your website need things to be so extremely easy that they don't have to think about it or go hunting in your menus or use a search function to find the things that they want, because, like I said, the truth is they just don't. People need things to be extremely easy so that they don't have to think about it. Alright, let's talk about some homepage mistakes to avoid. Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes is the one that my favorite restaurant makes, and that is when people have their hero section, that's that first section when you load the page, they have it vertically take up the entire page and there's no good content in it. In the restaurant example I shared earlier, the background image doesn't tell me much about the restaurant. It's just a pretty placeholder. The text does give me a little bit of a hint, but there is no call to action. This one's not quite as bad, though, as another restaurant in town. This one has a video background. Now, there's nothing wrong with a video background in general, but it is a full screen video of happy people at tables, servers bringing food out, you know, just some video that has been taken in their restaurant. It's obviously professional video. It looks fantastic. But there is literally nothing on that video. So there are no words at all on the page until I scroll down. If I went to that page, not knowing anything about the restaurant. And in fact, the first time I visited their site, this was me. It was a brand new restaurant. I went to their page and I saw a pretty video, and that was it. And the name of their restaurant doesn't really tell me much about what type of food they serve or anything like that. So before I scrolled down, there was nothing to grab my interest and make me want to go there. So I scrolled down some more, and there's great content below that, but for people who are in a hurry, who aren't as tech savvy, they may not even realize they need to scroll because the video takes up the entire top screen. So this restaurant would have done much better to have a good, solid headline, the name of their restaurant, a sub headline that highlights what type of place this is and what kind of food they serve, and a call to action for a restaurant, probably the call to action is usually just a menu link so that people can go check out your menu. Because if you think about it, that's the first thing people usually want to know when they get to a restaurant website is, what kind of place is this? What kind of food do they have, and how expensive is it? Because that's what we're thinking about when we're looking for restaurants. No one comes to your restaurant website to watch a video or to look at your pictures. And the same is true for almost every other niche, unless you're a photographer, maybe. And that really leads us right into the second mistake, which is missing the critical information above the fold, meaning before they have to scroll in that hero section. So your site needs to have a clear headline that says who you are, and a sub headline that explains what you offer, and it needs a call to action button right there, front and center. Now the opposite problem that I see is home pages that just overload people with way too much information. And I think this comes from a place of being worried that people may not click to other pages, and so you're trying to show off everything right on the homepage, instead of guiding people to their next step. A better approach is to simplify and to streamline things based on what your visitors need. Now your homepage obviously does need to be a little different depending on what type of business you have. So if you sell digital products or you are a coach, then you need to make sure your homepage highlights who you serve and the problem that you solve for them. You've also got to make sure that you build trust through putting some testimonials, some social proof on there, and there needs to be a very clear path, either to purchasing your products or booking your coaching services. If you're a service provider, you still need to have that problem solving focus, but you need some really heavy trust building elements. You need a lot of social proof and a lot of establishing your expertise throughout the page. The other thing that you definitely want to make sure you don't forget about as a service provider is links over to your portfolio or some case studies and some photo examples of your work, if that is something that applies to the type of service that you offer. Now, if you're a local business, it's a lot different. You don't have to do as much trust building, because people can walk into your business, and you can build trust that way. But you do need to make sure your location information is prominent, your hours and your contact information are easy to access and find, and then you need to think about what goes on this page to drive offline actions, because people come to your site looking for information, but you want to move them from the website to the business. So in that case, that looks like an appointment scheduler so that people can make their appointment and show up at your business for that appointment, or a reservation scheduling system. Maybe it looks like a menu or very clear explanations of what you offer when people come in and what to expect. You want to get people to move from the website to the business. So regardless of what business model you have, here is what I want you to do today. Take a few minutes to check your current homepage against that three to five second rule. Look at just the section before you start to scroll, so that above the fold section, and check it on mobile and desktop to see if your headline clearly communicates who you are and who you serve, plus it has a good call to action that lines up with your website's primary purpose. Now, before you can do that, of course, you do have to identify the primary purpose of your homepage based on your business goals. So think about what is that one most important action that you want those first time visitors to take? And then look to make sure you have a clear headline, not a generic one. You have a value proposition in that sub headline, what do you offer to people? And you have that one primary call to action. Make sure the entire page, including your menu navigation, is intuitive for first time visitors, and that they can easily find what they need without having to hunt around. And then double check make sure your homepage isn't either missing all the important information or overwhelming people with way too much. You want to be in that sweet spot in the middle where it hooks people in, gets them interested and excited, but doesn't quite answer all their questions until they click on whatever link it is that you want them to click. Keep in mind you have that three to five seconds to hook a visitor before they bounce and go looking at your competition. So your homepage can't just be that pretty welcome mat. It needs to be a strategic tool that guides people to take action. So take that few minutes today to audit your homepage using the framework I shared, and try your hardest to look at it through the eyes of someone who's never heard of you before, and see if it passes that three second test. Because the truth is, if your homepage isn't converting visitors, you are literally watching sales walk out the door. If this show was helpful for you today, then make sure that you follow the show so you'll get notified when new episodes are live, and check back next week, where we talk some more about creating that content for your website that really converts visitors into customers. While you're at it, if you have an extra second, I would really appreciate it if you would rate or review the show wherever you like to tune in. I'll talk to you soon.