- A weblog by InetSolution
Site Review - tell visitors only what they want to know, not what YOU want to tell them
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Sep 18, 2006
The owner of www.scientificbusinesssolutions.com asked for feedback regarding his website's home page. My recommendation follows.
The novel on your home page is your attempt to tell visitors everything you want them to know. Instead, you need to focus on what they - your visitors - want to know. What makes your customers feel like they've spent their money well after doing business with you?
After reading your entire home page (normally I wouldn't have read that much text, but since you've asked for an opinion, I felt obligated to read it), I've concluded this what you'd do for me:
Within 11 weeks, you'll see a significant cash flow increase as a result of the reduced lead time that our hands-on TOC training delivers to manufacturing companies.
What makes SBS different from traditional TOC:
- Designed for small manufacturing companies with limited time resources
- Minimal impact on management's day-to-day responsibilities
- Hands-on implementation over 4-8 weeks
- We deliver bottom line improvements in 3 weeks
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Consider consolidating your home page content into a concise headline and a few bullet points like that above. After you've piqued the visitor's interest, you can offer additional information. Make sure that your additional information is still concise, however.
I don't recall where I picked up this piece of advice (it may have been Seth Godin or perhaps Dr. Eric Schaffer from Human Factors International -- sorry gentlemen for not remembering), but I've rarely found myself unable to apply the rule to a client's, as well as my own, first draft of website content:
You should be able to reduce your first draft's word count by 50% without changing your message.
I'd venture to say that you could reduce your current home page word count by 50% and then run through again and further reduce it by another 50% without changing your message's main points.
That's all I have time for now. Good luck!
Regards,
Jason
P.S. Here's a nice example of a website that concisely tells the visitor what the product will do for him (or her):
