If you don’t have a website, you’re basically living under a rock. I don’t care who you are or what business you have, you must have a website. So what do you need to have on your website?

I’m going to cover the most important things for your homepage. Not only because that’s where most people land first, but if that’s not going to convert people to something else on your website, then nothing will.

I did an informal poll my group asking them what they click on when they come to the website. They want to know about you, they click to you, they click to how they work with you. They scroll down to find out if there’s something they can opt into. They want to read reviews, which is great because it’s all the things we have on our list to go through today.

A GREAT headline

Okay, so the first thing, the most important thing you’ve got to have on your site and what a lot of people are getting wrong is the headline. Just think about the giant text on your site. It’s often behind a colored background on your face. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, you’re the face of your business.

The headline needs to say, what do you do? And who do you do it for? That’s the number one thing.

If you remember from last week, if you’ve heard me talk about websites before, it kind of works the same way as it did in the journalism world, right.

When I was a copy editor and a page designer, as a journalist, I know we’re worried about what’s above the fold. What’s going to get people to pick up the paper and actually buy it. Now granted, this is when people actually bought a newspaper. This was like way back before the whole industry broke. But the same principle applies to your website. You basically consider what is the thing that they can see on their screen that’s going to be called your above fold.

And you need to have your biggest headline, so like nerdy stuff here, but your h1 tag, if you’re selecting your font or your copy on there or you’re hand-coding it to h1 tag right there. That’s the biggest font size that your theme or your website will pull and it’s the most important thing that one Google is going to pull for you when it scrolls or crawls on your site.

But also, there’s something about size and how people relate to how important that text is. That’s why that’s the biggest headline in newspapers, right? Like, like, Whoa, this is so important, because it’s like size 63 font. The same thing applies to your website. So make sure when someone can land on your site, both mobile and on a desktop that you have a giant headline.

If that is not the first thing people see they’re immediately going to bounce. You may have like a half a scroll up to answer Who is this and what is this thing. People are always looking for something to give them reassurance that they’re in the right place. This could be a tagline. It could be a short sentence, it could be something like a phrase. Whatever it is, that’s what’s going to be hooking people so they continue going.

Remember, the whole point of when you get people to land on your website, is you’re taking them on a journey, and you want them to keep scrolling or to do the thing you’re asking them to do across your site So make the big claim and put your stick in the stand so that it screams: I do this for you!

A subhead that gives details that clue them that they’re right at home

The second thing which goes along that is your subheading. You want to make sure that you’re able to break it down with more specifics. So for example, it could be something really short and pithy. On the new website that I’m launching, it’s going to say something along the lines of growing your business locally. It’s giant, top pink has a period, but my subhead is I help female entrepreneurs and small business owners grow locally to six figures and beyond.

Right, like that’s my hook and my promise and like a little bit more detail to give some...