by Katja Bartholmess

Grace Gerry is a coach/counselor from Victoria, BC. She offers groups, 1-on-1 sessions and workshops to professional women seeking to reduce stress and improve their emotional lives. Of her website, www.gracefulsolutions.ca, Grace says, “I would of course like to attract more clients…As I offer workshops overseas I could see my website being an important way to market myself and future products.”

With these goals in mind, I took a look at Grace’s home page and gave it the Homepage Booster 7 Point Critique with a list of easy-to-implement suggestions that you could get for your website too – click here for more info on the Homepage Booster. My advice is aimed at showing Grace how she can increase traffic to her page and keep viewers engaged till they’re ready to get in touch with her. But I’m sure that everyone concerned with the performance of their website will benefit from reading through it.

Let’s first take a look at Grace’s homepage:

by HomeBusinessWiz contributing writer Katja Bartholmess

I'm going to tell you a true story that illustrates why your website home page is so important. And then I'll tell you what you must and must not do to have a winning home page.

First, the story. Last week, I lugged a garbage bag full of shoes to my office and dropped it by my assistant’s desk.

“Please get these fixed,” I said. “Soon.”

I didn’t have to tell him that these were my four favorite pairs of shoes – he’d been seeing them on heavy rotation since I hired him.

So when my assistant started his Google search, he knew what to look for:

1) quality – a business that would understand how much I care about my favorite shoes (and what walking around on the rough streets of New York does to them)

2) speed – a quick turnaround (somewhere nearby) so I wouldn’t have to spend an extra minute walking around in my lesser favorites.

His search for “shoe repair” + “astor place” yielded 365 links, one for every day of the year. He spent half an hour clicking through to various sites, but none of them made a compelling case. In the end, he had to lug the bag of shoes to a place all the way across town – inconvenient, but at least recommended by a
trusted friend.

I got to thinking: if only one of those links had spoken to me as a customer. Something that addressed my needs and desires and let me know that the solution was a click away. It would have been as simple as adding a headline like this: “Acme Cobblers: shoe repair for the rough streets of New York.”

Winning over clients with a home page that works isn’t rocket science. But it’s not that easy either. There are certain things you must do, and other things that you must avoid at all costs. As an experienced advertising copywriter, I’m about to share my 7 rules for a winning home page with you.

If you're in business, you have a product or service to sell. And the more people who know about your product or service, the more customers you will have. And the more customers you have...well, you get the picture.

Here's a super-easy way to get free publicity: treat someone to your product or service. But not just anyone. Choose someone who has the capability to tell lots of other people about your business. And who might that be? Think local media outlets: newspapers, tv stations, radio stations, and magazines.

Whatever you sell, there's someone who would be tickled to get a free sample. Maybe you have a bakery - how about finding out the birthday of your local weatherperson and delivering a personalized cake. Or maybe you're a hair stylist. Offer a complimentary "before and after" makeover to your local newsanchor. Does your local tv station have a pet show? Send them a basket of your organic doggie treats and they may just talk about them on the show.

PR expert Joan Stewart tells how a new restaurant delivered breakfast to the staff of the radio talk show "The Wayne and Jayne Show" on KBS Radio in Kelowna, British Columbia. It was simple: the restaurant owner dropped off the breakfasts along with a card that read: "Hey, love the show. We just wanted to send you guys breakfast." Presto! The idea worked. "We talked about it on the air because they were nice to us," co-host Wayne Kelly said. "They got a ton of promotion which resulted in people coming through their doors."

Who could you treat today?