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Title: Put Your Homepage To Work!

Author: Said Rouhani

Article:
Your homepage is probably the most important page of your whole
Web site. Yes, even more important than your order page (or the
pages where you pre-sell affiliate program products).

The first page most of your visitors will land on is your
homepage. If your homepage doesn't grab your visitor's
attention, your order page will be useless. You can have a super
hot design. You can have the fanciest e-commerce package in the
World. You can even have the most desirable widget for sale.

But if your homepage doesn't pull your visitor's interest and
push your sales offer (without being pushy), you will lose an
enormous amount of sales.

There are two aspects of your homepage that affect its sales
power:

1. Design 2. Copy

As always, the most important thing in this exercise of Internet
marketing is: KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.

Here are a couple of highly effective design and copy strategies
you can use to boost the sales power of your all important
homepage:

1. Keep vital elements above the fold. "Above the fold" is a
term borrowed from newspaper lingo. It means the area that
readers see first (which means the top of your homepage), so it
is the most important area. Basically, this area does the work
of grabbing your visitor's attention while your main copy is
loading. You should place your Unique Selling Proposition, logo,
and an attention grabbing headline above the fold.

2. Work your headline to perfection. Your headline is the most
important piece of copy on your homepage. Make it totally
irresistible. Here's a "secret" tip for headlines: don't give
the opportunity for the reader to escape your headline. For
example, "Do you want to make money online?" isn't a good
headline, because it gives a way out for the reader. How about:
"Learn all you ever wanted to know about making a fortune on the
Internet". Much more powerful.

3. Offer something for free on your homepage. An ebook,
newsletter subscription, special report, etc. An effective
strategy is to use free books in conjunction with newsletter
subscriptions (i.e. "subscribe and get this free ebook"). At
least if they don't stay at your site this time, they'll be
reminded to re-visit when you send your newsletter.

4. Optimize your homepage for super-fast loading. This is very
important. One of the primary reasons people leave Web sites is
because of slow loading. Keep the total size of your homepage
below 40kB.

5. Reduce animations. In fact, eliminate animations (especially
banners) from your homepage altogether. They distract from your
copy and don't do anything to improve the sales power of your
homepage. So what if they look cool? Are you in it to look cool
or make money?

6. Get rid of outbound links. Why the heck link AWAY from your
Web site on your homepage? If you don't want people leaving your
site, then don't provide them with an opportunity to do so. As
simple as that.

7. Put up testimonials. Find something nice people have said
about your business and put them up as testimonials on your
homepage (ask for permission first of course). Subject to
approval of the person who sent you the testimonial, include the
name and email address of the person at the end (and their URL
if applicable). Testimonials are very important credibility
builders. You MUST use them (if you haven't received any shining
testimonials from your visitors, you're probably doing something
wrong).

8. Keep re-working your copy. Your homepage copy will be a work
in progress. It will take up to several weeks to get it right.
You must constantly read through it and make adjustments, each
time making it tighter and tighter. Do NOT write about yourself
or your company on your homepage. It's all about your target
audience and their needs and wants. Focus on the BENEFITS that
your product has to offer. And don't try to get your copy
perfect in one go: that's impossible. You need to leave it for a
couple of days, then re-visit with fresh eyes, re-work, leave
for a couple of day, re-visit, re-work and so on and so on.
Until your copy is totally leak proof.

9. Finally: TEST TEST TEST! This is probably the most important
aspect of doing business online. You must test everything you
do, and if it doesn't work, you need to try something else. If
you for example change your headline and sales suddenly increase
significantly (and you haven't carried out any major marketing
campaigns), then your headline is probably a winner. To be
absolutely sure, revert back to the old headline for a week or
so and check if sales drop. If they do, then you definitely have
a winning headline, so stick with it. Yes, you might lose some
money reverting to the old headline for a week, but as a result
of knowing what works you'll be able to apply it and increase
your sales.

About the author:
Said Rouhani is the editor of the All-About-Making-Money-Online
Ezine. Subscribe now for FREE ebook containing 50 home-based
businesses you can start for under $500 (click below):
http://www.all-about-making-money-online.com/newsletter/

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