Work at Home:
Secrets of writing a business website homepage

Think you know how to write a business website homepage? Read this article to make sure.

You probably think you already know what a homepage is. But if you’re like many business website owners, you really don’t. The homepages of many business websites are suffering an identity crisis. They're trying to do the job of several web pages, and doing none of those jobs well.

What a Business Website Homepage is Not:

A homepage is not the place to dump a long description of your business. That’s for the “about us” or “company information” page. On the homepage, this information will just bore most people.

A homepage is not the place where you list and sell all your products (unless you only have one or two). You should have a special products and services page for that, and preferably a shopping cart or catalog. Trying to make people buy right on your homepage is a little pushy. The homepage will also get over-crowded as your offerings expand. Instead, just include a list of product categories with links to inside pages, along with direct links to your biggest sellers.

A homepage is not the place to include the full text of your announcements and press releases. Just include a teaser paragraph of each article on the homepage, with a link to the web page with the full text. If people want to read the full text, they can. If they don’t, you haven’t bored them to tears.
A homepage is not your company president’s or owner’s personal blog. It’s OK to rant, rave, or preach the need for world peace. Just don’t do it on wesellwidgets.com

As you’ve probably noticed, a good website has multiple pages. You should have special web pages for special topics: an “about us” page for company information, a products and services catalog, the president’s blog, etc. When you advertise or send out links to your site, you should link directly to the most appropriate page, rather than just the homepage. Of course, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a homepage, just that you don’t need it to do every single thing you want your website to accomplish.

Quick Guide to Writing a Business Website Homepage: Important Points to Consider

Target audience

Your business website’s homepage must be all things to all the people who type your URL in their navigation bar, whether it’s their six-hundredth visit or whether they just happened to catch your web address painted on the back of your car.
Content

For the benefit of new visitors, a homepage must provide a snapshot of who you are and what visitors can do on your website. Your first one to three paragraphs should give a quick overview of what visitors can do on your site. For example, you could include a short paragraph each on “buy widgets,” “learn more about widgets,” and “meet other widget enthusiasts,” with links to your shopping cart, informational articles, and message board, respectively.

For returning visitors, the homepage must serve as a touchstone for navigating the site, announcing new developments and pointing out especially popular or useful pages. For these visitors you don’t have to write anything new especially for your homepage. Anyone who's coming back to your site is already interested and is going to want to jump right into the deeper pages of your site, rather than linger on the homepage wondering whether it's worth their time.

That's why your homepage should include teasers for the inside pages of your site. For instance, you could have a tip of the week, linked to a web page on your site with an article explaining it. Good navigation (list of links to the four to eight most essential web pages on your site) is also a must.

For both new and returning visitors, always give a prominent place to a featured product or service (or two or three) with a picture, one or two-sentence description, and a link to its own web page or its place in your "products and services page," catalog or shopping cart.

You should also always feature a satisfied customer. It's great if the satisfied customer can send you a picture of himself or herself. But no matter what, always include a testimonial quotation, and a link to a case study or customer story on its own web page, which you should definitely find time to write or have written for you by a website content provider.

Title

Don’t title your homepage “Welcome to [name of your site].” Don’t include that message anywhere on your homepage, in fact. It’s a waste of space. This was normal in 1996 but it’s pretty passé now. Everyone already knows they’re on your site. What you need to tell them is what they can do there. Try something like “Buy, Study, and Discuss Widgets.”

Also make sure your title incorporates any keywords you think people might use to search for your product or service on the internet. Search engines decide how to categorize pages largely based on the homepage title and first heading text.

Length

Ideally, the first few paragraphs of the homepage (the ones aimed at new visitors) should not be more than 100-350 words total. The teasers for inside pages targeted to returning visitors should not be more than about 100 words each.

Making Sure Your Website Has the Best Homepage Possible:

Before your homepage goes live, test it out on a few people. Don’t just ask your volunteers how they like your homepage. Courtesy may prevent you from getting an honest response. Instead, ask them to find how to buy your latest product or if they understand what’s the most important development in your company recently. If they can navigate to the correct page within about eight seconds (the average human attention span on the web), you’ve done well.
You may just want to hire a website copywriter, online copywriting firm, or website content provider to create your homepage for you. After all, you wouldn’t build your own office building, would you? Of course, that’s not an entirely fair comparison—more people will see your business website homepage than will ever see your office building.

Advancement in technology opened wide doors to many lucrative and innovative ways of earning extra cash through work at home jobs. With the use of a computer and the idea of telecommuting, stay-at home persons, especially mothers, are given the chance to make themselves more financially productive.

The idea of working at home may sound simple, but if we ponder on some important points we may end up with the realistic view that working at home just like other office jobs requires proper discipline. Working at home also means being open to attend other events that are normally happening in your home! Household chores like doing the dishes, cooking and preparing meals are some of the distractions that interrupt us to deal productively with assigned tasks in any work at home job.

It will be helpful to set up a guideline to follow before deciding to settle for a work at home job offer. Here are some suggestions that you may find essential and sensible to deal with work at home jobs dynamically.

1. Create a workspace in a quiet corner of the house. A space enough to accommodate you and some necessary office equipments is enough to be considered as your home-office set-up. What is important is the privacy and safety of your office files. If you have kids, it is vital to remind them that this space is your office and a prohibited zone for them.

2. Carve up specific days when to deal with housework and your office work. Time management and work delegation is the key to achieve this. Do house cleaning during day-off so as not to disrupt you from your current office workloads.

3. Be professional. Let house companions, relatives and friends know not be disturb you during hours considered as office hours. Working at home does not entitle you to be involved in any personal chats; you need to be honest during work at home hours.

4. Create a routine. If your future boss will give you the privilege to choose your work at home hours, select the time that you know you are most comfortable with to focus enough attention minus the distractions. When you have decided on your work at home hours, you should stick to them to create the impression of professionalism.

5. Before you sit and begin working on your assignments, prepare yourself as if you are going to a real outside office without the usual office uniforms. Freshen up and energize yourself to minimize the enticing thought of going back to bed for a nice sleep.

Indeed working at home is a very bright idea especially for stay-at-home mothers, you just have to establish and practice the proper routine so you don't sacrifice home chores that you have to deal with and work at home assignments that will make you financially productive. It’s just a matter of discipline and self-motivation. Besides, after dealing with your tasks for the day, you do not have to travel back home to spend quality time with your kids. You just clear up your home office set-up and go to your kid/s playing in the backyard. Have fun!

The internet business that you perform from your home is a business that involves people to people contact which requires learning as you go about your business. It is very much like learning to ride your bicycle and it has its fair share of falls and disappointments, and even if you do not succeed at first, you should keep on trying and success will come to you finally. So, another thing you need to realize when it comes to working from home is to be a good internet marketer.

Even if you want to try your hand at affiliate marketing or want a work from home business opportunity and you get your own website, it may still not be enough as there are other features that could help boost your internet based work at home business. For example, you would be in need of an auto responder which is very useful in driving traffic to your website and thus helps boost your business. And, it may also is better to own your own website rather than get one from someone else as you get to keep the ownership and also don’t need to give up control over the online mailing list you will have created.

Once you decide that a work at home business is what you want to do, you will need to give it a name that should include words that can help form a keyword which will help your website when people make searches for the product you are selling. If you are struggling to name your website, there are a few online tools which can be used free of charge that will throw up interesting options for you. Always keep the content of your website updated as this is very important given that people are always searching for more information and may not necessarily want to buy a product. Once you provide them with information it could wet their appetite for your product and thus help you convert the incoming traffic into a profitable sale.

Finally, you need to have a proper plan for marketing your work from home business and you should also always be on the lookout for new opportunities that will help grow your business and which should include plans that take one step at a time and once this plan is in place, all that you need to do is follow it to its logical conclusion. Hopefully, you can create the right business plan and then execute it resulting in a profitable working from home business enterprise for you.

Wow Paul, that was great reading

Paul, the article was amazing and so informative.
Thnks for it

I really needed to read this information. Discipline is key when working from home.

aj

Thanks Paul. Thats the kind of stuff i'm looking for usefull,honest,and informative.

Your right on the money......it is "work" when you are working a home business and you should have a plan and continue working the plan on a daily basis.

great information Paul and all of it right on point. Thanks for taking the time.

Very informative, thank you! Needed something like that! I think I will like it here