Please Don’t Welcome Me To Your Website


Filed under: Website Copywriting

I have a question for you. It’s an easy one. Answer honestly: does your website’s homepage text start off with something along the lines of “Welcome to…”?

If it does, I highly recommend you remove that sentence.  I’m going to have to pretend I don’t know you until you do that. So go on, go delete it.

Now.

“Welcome to our site!” and similar greetings are nothing more than fluffy, empty, purposeless words.

Fluffy text offers zero value whatsoever to your site’s visitors, and fails to engage or interest your prospects. Really, it accomplishes little more than taking up valuable homepage real estate.

Stop wasting your visitors’ time. Using empty/fluffy content only extends the time it takes for your visitors to find the information they care about.

I recommend giving consideration to the following questions; they can help you keep on track. The content I’d ultimately recommend you use on your home page would be strongly influenced by your answers.

  1. What do my site’s visitors truly care about?
  2. What problems or challenges are my site’s visitors likely looking to solve when they arrive at my home page?
  3. Do potential clients arriving at my site for the first time already have a clear understanding of the various services and/or products I offer?
  4. What makes me unique? Can I (concisely!) convey this uniqueness and explain why potential clients should use my services and/or products instead of my competitors’?
  5. Do my current clients have any reason to visit my existing site? If so, what type of home page content might be helpful to them?

Welcome your site’s visitors with information they’ll find helpful or compelling (or both). Focus on placing content your visitors care about at the top of your homepage and you won’t need to fill up the space with fluffy, unhelpful statements like “Welcome to our site!”