To use a cliché (something I normally wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, and would avoid like the plague), you only get one chance to make a first impression. It’s important, therefore, that that impression – in all likelihood your home page – should communicate clearly, concisely and compellingly what it is you do and, more importantly, what benefits that will bring to your customers.

So, what do you need to say on your home page? For many people that’s not an easy question to answer because they don’t think in the same way as their customers. When you work with a product or service, you see what you offer with supplier’s eyes, not those of a consumer. If that’s a problem for you, then read on; I’ll suggest a simple way of jumping to the other side of the fence.

When I ask clients of mine what it is they do, sometimes I get answers that leave me scratching my head: “Basically, we observe and track historic movements of stock indices across significant bourses worldwide, and using that data we construct behavioural models which, when married with real time data feeds, allow us hypothesise about future market movements, short, medium and long term. This allows our customers to identify upcoming transaction opportunities, whether of an instant acquire or dispose nature, or as potential go-long or go-short situations. Essentially, it’s non-trivial number-crunching and we have some seriously heavy metal in our computer room, mirrored to a distributed site so that in the event that in any one location we go into a crash and burn situation, then continuity is assured by automatic switchover. Is that clear?”

That’s not a real life example, but I’ve had real ones that are that bad, and worse. There’s a useful technique I apply, under my breath, when this happens which – politely – I’ll call WTF*.“So,” I ask politely, “WTF does that mean?”

Applied (and usually reiterated) with due regard to the sensitive nature of the client/supplier relationship, the WTF question lets my client – with some gentle prompting – distil a simpler statement about what they do. “We provide mathematically-based predictions of stock market movements to our customers, and we do it in a robust, fail-safe way.”

That still leaves much to be desired, and more work is required, because the next question to ask, politely, is “SFW*?” And this is where it gets interesting, because now we’re looking for a benefit statement. We probably won’t get there immediately, but we’ll get to an answer like: “Well, our service lets our customers buy and sell at the optimum point, within the uncertainty constraints of market behaviour.”

“SFW?”

“So they can make more money”

Great, between us we’ve got there, a solid reason for a customer to do business with my client. There are very few motivating benefits that make a customer think about spending money with a previously unknown potential supplier. This list is not exhaustive, but look for messages as powerful as these:

Business

* You’ll save money
* You’ll save time
* You’ll sell more
* Your profits will increase

Personal

* You’ll be healthier
* You’ll be richer
* You’ll be more successful
* Your family will thank you

Those, of course, are bold, bald statements but your home page should incorporate a lightly embroidered version of one (or more) of them within the first sentence. One of my websites opens with the sentence “You’ve invested time and money building a website – Write for Web helps you make your site work hard and produce a return from that investment.”

Do you need professional help to arrive at a powerful message for your own organisation? Perhaps not. What you do need is the ability to ask yourself questions and determine exactly what benefits you offer. And then, of course, you have to communicate them.

*WTF, SFW. Acronyms inserted to avoid triggering parental advisory warnings

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