Need a new website?

Awesome! But listen…

Do Not Pass Go OR take the $200 or hire a fancy design firm OR invest in a website hosting package until you read these words!

(via GIPHY)

No matter if you are launching a new business, product, or service OR you have just concluded that for whatever reason you do not like your current site the very first thing you must do before building a new website is

Come Up With Your Website Plan, beginning with your HOME PAGE  with these 

5 Steps To Strategically and Easily Lay Out an Effective Home Page to Drive Sales

 1. Begin with Your Brand Story.

Many people consider writing a brand story "fluffy" or maybe just "superfluous" but it's simply not true.

If you will document your ideal customer's journey in your brand story, you can create a website that will drive your customer through her journey to ultimately work with you! 

Having a brand story makes all of your marketing efforts, especially crafting your website SO MUCH easier!

If you haven't crafter your brand story, stop and do that now. I walk you through the process in my recent blog post, How To Write Your Brand Story, here.

2. Decide How you want to document your home page plan.

You'll want an outline. Fancy marketers (like us!) call this outline a "website wireframe." 

I have built a website using a wireframe I drew on paper (like the cute lady with the blond ponytail pictured above) AND I've also used this nifty FREE wireframing tool, here. 

3. Decide Upon Your Primary Call To Action. 

Driving traffic to your primary call to action ("CTA")  is basically "the point" of your website.

All roads must lead here!

Your CTA could be to purchase your most popular service package online, to call your office to book an appointment, to submit an email form with the expectation to hear back from you, to chat with a "bot" or maybe, to book a discovery call with you.

I ask clients to book a call with me via my Client Relationship Management software Honeybook (it's the best CRM EVER! I shared all the deets here, in a recent blog post). 

4. Create a Home Page Flow that Caters to All Types of Potential Customers

Your potential customers will visit your website at different "readiness to buy stages" and you want to appeal to all of them.

The easiest way to do this is to start at the top of your home page and tell visitors how you will help them and how they can work with you:

Share your Value Statement or Customer Transformation Statement identified in your Brand Story,  and give immediate access to your CTA  to those eager to work with you. 

5. Present information to meet customers where they are on their "customer journey".

I like to think of it like this, if someone visits my website and she wasn't ready to work with me when she landed on my site and saw my CTA above the fold, what information does she need to make her decision to take that next step?

. Based on Donald Miller’s teaching, in his best-selling book Building A Story Brand, I suggest sharing points from your Brand Story in the following order:

• Present the struggles your ideal customer faces before she works with you, as outlined in the Customer section of your Brand Story

• Present your plan, how you will help your ideal client. On the homepage of my website, I show summaries of the 3 services I offer with a button next to each that leads potential customers to a services page with a detailed description of each service

• Present the authority of your business (the guide in our brand story). That’s You! First show you have established authority in your industry.  I used 3 testimonials and then a summary of a case study I wrote about one of my client's results and a link to the detailed case study.  You could also share logos of recognizable companies with whom you worked in this section.

• Demonstrate your authority by sharing links to any free content you’ve created. Do you have a Youtube Show, a podcast, or a blog like mine? Offer links to this content in this section.

• If they are still scrolling and have not elected to hit your call to action button, offer an opportunity to connect further with you. Invite them to give you their name and email address so you can follow up with them later (ideally, follow up with them regularly by sending weekly emails to their inbox to encourage them to work with you).

• Finally, share your social media links so those who weren't ready to work with you, OR give you’re their contact information, can connect with you on their favorite social media platform!

And NOW you are ready to start building that new homepage. You can take this plan, and your wireframe to a professional website designer or create that website yourself.

I created this website on Kajabi and I LOVE IT!

According to their website, "Kajabi is All In One Platform. Everything you need in a single platform. Products, websites, landing pages, payments, analytics, marketing automation, email, communities, and more. It all just works!" 

If you would like to try Kajabi, they have given me a code that will give you 20% off with annually billing,  Just click below to redeem this

offer: https://app.kajabi.com/r/eyz4hpkr/t/hrgwyc3a

OR I also provide Kajabi Build-Out Services. Read more about my  Kajabi Build Out Services here:

https://www.meredithkallaher.com/kajabi-buildouts