Your homepage is the lynchpin to booking more couples. It sits at the intersection of your wedding business, smack dab where marketing meets sales. But too few pros pay enough attention or do the right things to make it easy for potential clients to take action on the website.
Don’t believe us? Look up your analytics and check out your homepage “bounce rate.” (Go ahead, we’ll wait.)
It measures how many visitors jump off your site after seeing this one page. If it’s higher than 50% you should keep reading, because you’re getting ghosted by more than half the people who hit up your online storefront.
Why is it bad to have a high bounce rate? Because it means to get more inquiries you have to spend:
- More money on listing sites like The Knot and Wedding Wire
- More time posting on social media
- More money on FB ad campaigns
- More time networking for referrals
- More money and time on styled shoots
- More time worrying about a slow inbox
- More money attending workshops that (probably) won’t get you more inquiries anyway
In fact, you’ve probably got enough people on your site, but you’re not doing things to keep them interested and engaged enough to inquire.
7 tips to create a high-converting homepage for your wedding business
- Wire-frame for skimmers
- Use a hook based on our reader’s stage of awareness
- Write conversationally in 1st and 2nd person perspective
- Introduce your services as the perfect solution
- Show the way as easy as 1-2-3
- Use several CTAs to lead buyers where they want to go
- Avoid annoying pop-ups and IG exits
Wire-frame for skimmers
Wire-framing is how the copy on your page is laid out. Sure, background blocking, graphics, images, and other design elements are important to make the site interesting and keep the reader going. But don’t neglect how you style headlines, captions, CTAs (calls-to-action), button copy, and paragraphs of body copy.
It’s estimated 80% of visitors will skim your site the first time around. So, make it easy for them to see what you’re communicating.
- Use headlines to let them know what they’ll find in the body copy below
- Keep body copy in small paragraphs no more than 4-5 column lines tall
- Make fonts easy to read with thick line weights and 16+-point height
- Use captions below images to highlight a point (because they’re read 300% more than body copy)
- Preface button CTA with “eyebrow copy” that invokes a question or creates desire to discover what’s on the other side of a click
- Use bullet points when listing out items like we’re doing here
Use a hook based on our reader’s stage of awareness
“An award-winning wedding [insert what you do] based in [insert where you live] that specializes in [insert something general that’s not really a niche]” is probably the most common intro to homepage copy we see.
And we look at hundreds of sites per month while doing comp set analysis for our copywriting clients.
It’s good for SEO but sucks for readers once they get to your site.
An effective “hook” grabs the reader’s attention – and makes them want to keep reading. What makes one intro work and another fall flat? It depends on where the site visitor’s at in the decision-making journey. We recommend you focus on a) a new, unique insight into how you help your clients, or b) a competitive advantage that sets you apart from others in your field/market.
Write conversationally in 1st and 2nd person perspective
The reason a hook works is because the person reading it feels triggered by or connected to what you write. It’s as if you’re speaking directly to them about their issues, desires and concerns.
It’s much easier for site visitors to feel this if you actually write directly to them, like you’re having a conversation. Use regular, everyday words and phrases that actually sound like a human, not a poet or thesaurus filled with four-syllable words.
Also, write from the first-person perspective (eg. I, we, my, me, we, us, etc.) instead of third (eg. he, she, they, their, formal names for people and businesses, etc.). Use second-person perspective to write directly to the reader using “you” to capture their attention. It makes it more personal and easier to connect with your and/or your brand.
And before you luxury providers even guffaw: Yes, we mean you, too. Your clients want exclusivity and extraordinary, not unapproachable and unremarkable.
Introduce your services as the perfect solution
Your business exists to provide services that meet the needs of your clients. Everything you do should be directed at telling them you a) understand what they want, b) offer a service/product to meet that need, and c) do it better than others they’re considering.
Your Home page should make that very clear. In the first 30-60 reading seconds (100-200 words) you should let them know you get where they’re at in the decision-making, what they want from a vendor like you, and then introduce your business as the best option to service their needs.
Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about what you can do for them.
Show the way as easy as 1-2-3
People are very attached to their present location in the buyer’s journey. Human nature prefers status quo over change. A great way to create momentum is to show couples a simple way froward.
Lay out the next steps to get your services on the bottom of your homepage. Keep it clear. Make it easy. Create desire. For example: “First, you reach out through the contact form. Second, we talk about what’s most important for [insert what you do]. Third, pick the option that works best – and we start the fun part of wedding planning!”
Couples want to follow a guide who can show them the path before making them move from their current position of comfort.
Use several CTAs to lead buyers where they want to go
The homepage is like a table of contents for your website. Your readers are mostly skimmers looking for the section of your site that’s most interesting to them. Make it easy to choose their own adventure by presenting options for each of your major pages.
The simplest and most effective way to do this is structure the homepage from top to bottom in the same order as the main navigation from left to right. We use About, Services, Portfolio, Blog and Contact, in that order.
Make your homepage almost like a newsletter with images, snippets, and CTAs to explore more. They’ll click through to the page that interests them as they scroll down.
Avoid annoying pop-ups and IG exits
It’s not only what you put on the homepage that creates conversions to your inbox, it’s also what you leave off of it.
Let’s be clear, no one likes a pop-up within 10 seconds of being on a site. Unless you’re offering a seriously good free download, avoid pop-ups on the homepage – and certainly delay for 30 seconds or until they reach the bottom of the screen.
In fact, exit pop-ups are more effective anyway.
Also, don’t provide an easy exit from you site by attracting attention and interest to your IG. You’ve done everything you can to get the couple from IG to your website. Why offer them a U-turn back toward social media? Eliminate this from the bottom of your homepage, if not the entire site.
Put these seven tips into practice now, and you’ll spend less time and money trying to get more people to your site in the first place. You probably have the kind of traffic to your site to book out your business. Now is the time to do something with it through a high-converting homepage.
If you feel you don’t have the time or skill to make these changes happen, reach out and let us know. We’re happy to help.
Comments Off on Wedding Pro’s Guide to a High-Converting Homepage