Your homepage is one of the key pages on your website. It’s often the starting point for visitors and therefore viewed most often. So what should your homepage communicate?

Your homepage should:

• Introduce the purpose and scope of your website
• Set the tone and build credibility

Important homepage elements:

• Header and footer
• Logo and tagline
• Clear menu and table of contents
• Company overview
• Key benefits you offer
• News, events and announcements

Like other pages, keep the design and messages simple, and use small images so the homepage loads quickly. Also, use direct, simple sentences.

Every slight improvement to your homepage’s web content will help you create a good first — and lasting — impression.

While discussing a client’s project, one of the web copywriters at Webcopyplus suggested breaking up web content does a lot more than promote scanability.

It started a discussion about the additional benefits of segmenting web content into digestible chunks. Here’s what we came up with.

One-topic sentences and paragraphs help web copywriters:

• Deliver scannable web content
• Layer information (small blocks of text can link to other blocks)
• Organize information effectively (easy to arrange and view)
• Join similar topics
• Provide content that’s easier to remember
• Reduce or eliminate scrolling

Concise web content doesn’t just happen. You need to plan your topics and approach. And once you complete the initial draft, keep cutting away all those dead words!

The extra time you spend or invest in your web content will help ensure your online guests enjoy their stay, complete their tasks and keep coming back for more.

More than 88% of Internet users believe they are served poor content on the Web, according to an online poll conducted by Webcopyplus.

When asked to rate the overall quality of content on the Web, poll respondents selected the following options:

1. Poor 88.5%
2. Satisfactory 9.8%
3. Good 1.5%
4. Excellent 0.2%

A total of 480 Internet users participated in the web writing firm’s online poll during a four-month period that ended in April of 2008.

Subsequent interviews with web users revealed multiple common concerns, including:

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Clients are regularly surprised to find out the web copywriters at Webcopyplus aim to deliver web content at a grade 8 language level.

The reasons are many: to promote readability, scanability and usability. Simple connects. You decrease the chances of alienating your audience.

While there are exceptions, most target audiences will have varied expertise, in both the Internet and subject matter. A Web or subject expert can endure simplicity, but a novice might not be able to identify with or comprehend complex information.

If your business needs to communicate complicated information, an effective solution is to layer various degrees of details through links. That way, when necessary, your visitors can drill down and get the finer points.

In any case, web copywriters should always go out of their way to keep web content clear, concise and easy to read. Simple web content translates to more connections and higher conversion rates.

Consumers consume information all day long, so it’s difficult to catch their attention with copywriting — forget about influencing them to actually do something.

So, as a copywriter, what choices are there?

Many. But the best one, which proves to work time and time again, is delivering information that’s relevant to the target audience.

Information is communication. Communicate about something that has nothing to do with a particular person’s interest, and you won’t connect. Speak to his or her needs or wants and you get a completely different response.

When it comes to the Web, copywriting isn’t just something you store and retrieve. To engage online visitors, web content must at least touch on topics or issues that are important to the targeted individual.

That’s when web content connects, influences and converts. And that’s when your web content actually works on the behalf of your business.

When creating web content, always go for relevant. It’ll consistently get you the best return.

Information layering is a practical technique that helps online visitors quickly gather information relevant to their needs.

In brief, high level information is provided with links to more detail and supplementary web content.

Webcopyplus employs this strategy for clients, and finds it especially useful for IT firms, which generally need to target a wide-ranging audience.

Take, for example, an IT services page that offers an overview of offerings, including Network consulting, Disaster planning and Web hosting. Each noted service would include a link to more specific information.

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Your web content creates reality. Each word you use directly impacts how your online visitors perceive your business.

Do online visitors:

• See value in your product or service?
• Trust your business?
• Invest in your offerings?

Get 18 tips to help you create the right reality on the Web.

The content you post on your website delivers certain messages to consumers — both consciously and subconsciously.

The difference between “inexpensive” and “cheap,” or “pre-owned” and “used” is massive.

Along the same lines, consider a restaurant menu that has a burger for $10.99 or $11. You’ll find the $10.99 at a greasy spoon that’s positioning itself on giving a “steal of a deal.”

Up it a penny, as you might find at a quaint bar in a trendy part of town, and that business is striving to convey value through a more refined, upper-class experience. Status comes into play.

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Your web copywriting doesn’t describe reality, it creates it.

In fact, every word you feature on your website has the ability to build — or damage — how prospects perceive you. What you say and how you write it directly impacts whether an online visitor:

• Sees value in your product or service
• Trusts your business
• Decides to invest in your offerings

Untapped Opportunities on the Web

While many business owners are beginning to understand information is the currency of the Internet, few act on it. This is despite the fact that the Web allows smaller businesses to go toe-to-toe with larger, more established companies.

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Too many web copywriters continue to churn out superfluous, self-serving web content.

Webcopyplus was recently handed a project that was pulled from another writing firm. The draft we were asked to “clean up” and optimize for search engine spiders required more than that. It needed a complete overhaul.

Web copywriters shouldn’t aim for clever. What the writer is saying is, “Look at me! I’m writing!” It’s intrusive and distracting for the reader.

The most effective web writing is objective, clear, concise and specifically written for the intended audience. Don’t slow readers down with unnecessary words. They are just dead words that get in the way.

In fact, as important as it is to focus on what needs to be said, web copywriters should also focus on what doesn’t need to be said.

On the Web, less is more. Always.