Say what you do and who it's for, above the fold
Above the fold is the part of the page a visitor sees before they scroll, and on a homepage it carries almost all the weight. Someone arriving from a search result or an advert has not committed to reading on, so this space has to answer two questions before anything else: what does this business do, and is it for someone like me. The case studies, the pricing, the footer links, none of it gets read unless those two questions land first.
A homepage that opens with "Empowering businesses to reach their full potential" answers neither question. It could describe a software company, a management consultancy or a gym, and the visitor has no way to tell whether they are in the right place, so they leave to find out somewhere else. A homepage that opens with "Payroll software for UK businesses with fewer than 50 staff" answers both in one line: what it is, and who it is for.
Write the headline to name the thing and the audience before writing anything persuasive around it. Persuasion works on a visitor who already knows they are in the right place, and it does nothing for one who does not.
Order the page by what the reader still needs to decide
A homepage is read top to bottom by someone deciding, one section at a time, whether to keep going. The sections need to answer questions in the order those questions come up. A working order runs roughly as follows.
- What the business does and who it serves, stated in the headline and the line beneath it
- How it works or what is included, so the visitor can picture using it
- Evidence that it works, placed only once the visitor understands what "it" is
- The objection most visitors are quietly holding, answered directly
- A closing call to action that repeats the one from the top, for whoever has scrolled the whole way down
Reorder this and the page stops working even if every sentence in it is well written. A page that opens with evidence before it has said what the business does asks the visitor to be impressed by results for a product they cannot yet picture.
Make the subheading answer the objection the headline raises
The headline states the promise: what the visitor gets. It is the natural place for the unique selling proposition (USP), the one claim that separates this business from the alternative the visitor is weighing it against, stated as plainly as it can be stated. The subheading has a different job. It answers the objection the headline raises.
A headline that reads "Accounting software built for freelancers" raises an obvious question: built how, differently from every other accounting software making the same claim. A subheading that answers it, "Send an invoice and log an expense from your phone in under a minute", gives the visitor a reason to believe the headline. A subheading that instead reads "The smart way to manage your finances" answers nothing, because it could sit under any headline on any finance page.
Write the headline first and read it back as a question. If it leaves an obvious "how" or "why not everyone else" hanging, that is the question the subheading needs to answer.
Place a call to action above the fold, and again after every argument
A call to action (CTA) tells the visitor what to do next: buy, book a call, start a trial, sign up. Place one above the fold, near the headline, for the visitor who already knows what they want and is only checking this is the right business. Place another after the section that answers the main objection, for the visitor who needed persuading first. A homepage that saves its only CTA for the bottom of the page loses everyone who decided to act earlier and had nothing to click.
The words on the button matter as much as where it sits. "Learn more" promises nothing, so the visitor has no particular reason to click it over anything else on the page, while "See pricing" or "Start your free trial" tells them what happens next and gives them something to act on. The full case for writing these is set out in How to Write a Call to Action.
Use specific evidence as social proof
Social proof is evidence that other people have used the business and found it worked, and its persuasive power comes almost entirely from specificity. A star rating with no context tells the visitor very little, because there is nothing to check it against. A quotation that names the problem solved, such as cutting invoice processing from three days to one afternoon, gives the visitor something concrete to weigh against their own situation, and that is what turns it into evidence.
Where a homepage has no named clients or measured results to show, it reads better to describe the kind of problem the business solves and the approach taken to it than to fill the space with generic praise dressed up as proof. A vague testimonial convinces nobody, and a page that shows less is more credible than one straining to look like it has more. The full list of terms used across this guide, including USP and CTA, is defined in the copywriter's glossary.