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Tell them what the site is about. Have all your big products there that you have for sale. There's tons of things you can do, yet people have no clue where to start. The design of your homepage must become unbelievable. It must hook people in straight away. It must be the page you spend the maximum amount of time on if you are to become successful, and I know for a fact that's what you want.
Once you have read these amazing tips you will see an automatic improvement overnight, if you already receive a lot of traffic. Even if you don't have traffic coming in yet, you can still have it ready for maximum impact.
• You need a way for people to opt-in
The best way to get people to opt-in is by using a feature-box on the homepage. This sits below your site's logo, which we won't touch on because it's show on every page. If you have a freebie to offer people, you should have a lovely big graphic in the feature-box and peoples eyes will be drawn to it.
Make sure it looks nice. You also want some benefits people will receive when they sign up to your list. Nobody is just going to give you their email for nothing. When you include the email box you should use the words, "my email address is," because funnily enough this will get you more sign-ups.
• Have your products on show
Right above the fold you should have advertisements for your flagship product/s. Most people will not buy something straight away, but some people will and you will lose sales if you don't make this option available to them.
They might head off to your competitors site and buy something straight away, then decide they don't need yours. If you offer services this is also the place to advertise them. Don't risk having a little link somewhere on your site to the 'hire me' page.
• Tell people what the site can do for them
This is a big one. Instead of just telling someone what the site is about, which will be the same as everyone in your niche, you should tell someone what your site will do for them. Will it change their life? Will it help them lose 100lbs?
If someone knows they could change their life for the better they will be more interested in your site. The quicker you can convey this message, the quicker you have them as an avid reader. If you have a look at the top people in your niche you will see exactly how they do it. If you can't compete with them you won't get anywhere. Start thinking about how you can help people before it's too late.
• Make it easy to navigate
You have plenty of options available that will guarantee your visitors always know where to look for the right stuff that applies to them. The biggest two are the navigation bar and the sidebar. The navigation bar will probably get the most views, so you'd be better putting all your best pages in there.
The ones that people need to read: start here page, about page, store, and the contact form. You can add more, but those are a good start. In the sidebar you can put all the others. Don't make it so crowded that people can't find stuff. Simple is always better.
PatrickAbout the Guest Author:
This guest post was written by Patrick from YarraWeb a leading web design Melbourne company. Patrick contributes to many popular web design blogs as a regular contributor.