Design / Usability

Home Page Best Practices for Local Businesses Lorrie Thomas , Web Marketing Therapy - Feb 9, 2010

The home page of a website is valuable marketing real estate to brand, build, and boost your locally based business. Follow these home page best practices to maximize your selling power.

Clearly Communicate Who You Are, What You Do, and Whom You Serve

You have two seconds to capture your website visitor's attention. Make it immediately clear what products and/or services your local business sells. Identify what market you serve (geographically and demographically) to immediately pre-qualify the right customers. Do not be afraid to identify your niche. Use your home page to attract the right customer so your sales time is spent on quality candidates. Your time is money.

As a locally based business, make it very clear where you do business. Using the local area code with your phone number instantly indicates that you're nearby. A toll-free phone number is great for customer service, especially for out-of-town callers. But when you show a local phone number under the tool free number you clarify your location, build trust, and increase leads.

Employ Professional Website Design

You communicate value not only through your words but also through your design. Don't look at professional website design as an unneeded expense -- rather as an investment that lasts years and sets a tone that supports sales. In addition to graphics, your design can include professional photos of your business location, or even a video introduction.

Trust starts visually. Of course, web surfers scan rather than reading carefully, so design with that in mind. You need text to allow search engines to index your site properly and get higher rankings. But you'll also want to communicate visually -- with art, photos and video -- to motivate your visitors once they land on your home page

Have a Clear Purpose and Call to Action

What do you want people to do when they visit your website? Call? Learn More? Read information? Fill out a contact form? The purpose of your website needs to be designed into your home page. You wouldn't build a house without a blueprint. The same principle applies to your website's home page.

Here's a helpful exercise: Without looking at your website, write down what purpose(s) your website serves. This may include attracting search engines, showing how to find your local business, communicating your products/services, branding, funneling different types of customers to different areas of the site, and more.

Next, decide what will be your calls to action. Do you want web visitors to call? Join an e-mail list? Login? Visit a certain area of the website? Fill out a contact form? Every local business will have varying purposes and calls to action, so determine what yours are. Don't expect a web designer to know these by osmosis. All of your answers become design criteria that must be incorporated (in priority order) into your home page.

Demonstrate visually and textually what you want people to do when they hit your website. Architect your local business home page to have the most important information and wanted actions "above the fold" (on the first screen) so visitors do not have to scroll to find them. You may have several intentions; just make sure that they are visible to your visitors so you can bring them into your sales funnel.

The top right hand corner of a webpage is the most valuable "call to action" area on a website. The upper middle area of a website is most visible for marketing messaging. (See Amazon.com's use of this space).

Newsletter Sign-ups

Websites have only second to make a large first impression. Sometimes visitors will leave and come back until they trust you. One way to maximize website visitors is to build an e-mail list. Most local business owners do not take full advantage of e-mail collection as a web marketing tool. Sign up for an e-mail marketing management company like iContact or AWeber. Then add the e-mail signup box they supply as an easy way to get the most out of your visitors.

In today's over-e-mailed world, you need to communicate value in order to increase e-mail signup box conversions. "Sign up for our eNewsletter" doesn't cut it anymore. Use your local niche expertise and offer a newsletter with local lore. The difference between "Join our e-mail List" vs. something worthwhile like "Get the Insider e-mail for Mesa, Arizona Dining" or "Sign up to get Free San Jose Motorcycle Ride Routes" makes a big difference. When there is something worth signing up for, you will capture more e-mail address that allow you to sell to, upsell and resell to your website visitors.

Make your home page a "north star" that guides your visitors to where you want them to go. Success begins with that first page. Getting people to your site is only half of the local marketing puzzle, getting people through the site is what makes a real impact. Invest in the health of your local business; secure a smart web solution that serves your business for years to come.

Lorrie Thomas, MA is a The Marketing Therapist^TM. She helps small businesses get BIG with web marketing. Her team of "wild web women" at Web Marketing Therapy support clients as a web marketing agency and web marketing training company. Lorrie speaks nationally and teaches Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing courses at UCSB and Berkeley Extension.