Create Sparks on Your Home Page

Content & Article Writing

Your website's home page is where you establish your Valuable PREselling Proposition ("VPP"), cleanly, sharply and quickly. In the reader's mind, your VPP must answer the question, "Who is this person and why should I pay attention?"

Visitors want adventures, stories, characters, spirit, credibility. If the subject matter is more serious, like business, they want authority, of course. But they want you most of all and no matter what. So...

Flesh your content out with passionate, personal material. Done well, you make your visitor sit up and pay attention, and s/he doesn't even know why.

How do you achieve this goal?

It all begins with your home page...

1) Start Strong: Team up your top headline and the first paragraph for maximal effect, establish your VPP, and begin to set your voice even at this "first words" part of the page.

2) Nail Your Valuable PREselling Proposition: VPPs are easy when you have a unique story. Don't think you have a "natural" one? Sometimes that great unique story is right under your nose.

3) Position ("Spin") Yourself (Take a Stand): How you position your site (and yourself!) can range from identifying/siding with your visitor to being the authority in a given field.

• Craft a strong sentence that comes straight out of your reader's head.
• Use examples to make the point.
• Weave yourself naturally into the spin/positioning, without overdoing it, of course.
• Establish a brand if appropriate, ideally based upon (or close to) your domain name. (Think about how water is sold -- commodities become brands.) The right brand anticipates a possible future series of branded sites.

4) Establish the Right Voice: Your voice (not Wikipedia's) can be witty and funny or conservative (even authoritative), controversial and edgy or quietly respectful, pleasant or curmudgeonly. Use the jargon of the niche to establish your "street cred." A great voice is the "subtext" that builds a feeling, a following. Voice makes a site spark.

5) Make the Body Copy Flow Smoothly and Clearly: Flow is important - your reader knows nothing about your site. So your copy must flow logically and sequentially, pulling the reader through while "educating." Good copy with flow ties it all together, into one coherent whole.

6) Turn a Phrase: Clever turns of phrase add character. They tickle the brain, exciting the reader for more.

7) Close strongly, tying it all together. Start some momentum with a rousing headline and first paragraph. Build the story and its positioning in a way that your reader can easily follow. Establish an appropriate and personal voice. Try hard for a "killer phrase"... a clever bon mot that adds another spark. Close it sharply, tying it all together.

In short... make your home page spark. And once you do, set the rest of your site ablaze too. Your home page sets the tone for the rest of your site.