Can you help me find the right word/s? [See details].
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ETpro (
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May 15th, 2012
As a Yahoo! Store developer, I get lots of calls from existing store owners who either did it themselves to get started, using the Yahoo! cookie-cutter look, or who had their site done professionally a decade ago—and have seen sales decline as the site looks ever more dated and as the Google Panda algorithm downgraded the site’s search ranking.
I have a word .DOTX template for a makeover proposal. After talking through their needs, taste and budget; I fill it in with the particulars that suit them, and fire it off to them. The very first item in the deliverables list is what is troubling me. It reads:
1. Home page with hard-hitting text and graphics to sell SITENAME products.
The text in bold sounds lame and, well, dated like the sites it’s intended to update.
It needs to get across this point. Internet usage researchers have determined that users shopping on the Web form an opinion about whether a site that a search sends them to is it (has what they are looking for, is trustworthy, and worth exploring) or is not it in one-twentieth of a second. They will stay on a page longer than 50 milliseconds, but if that first instantaneous impression doesn’t convince them; they almost always back button to their original search and try another link.
I’m looking for a succinct way to say in my proposal that we understand this and will build them a site with a home page crafted to win that critical instant approval. Can anybody help me distill it down? Or should I first explain the one-twentieth of a second rule and then refer to that explanation in the deliverables list when describing the home page makeover?
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9 Answers
“Home page with punch to sell XXXX Products?” Pizzazz? Sizzle?
I’m speculating here, but it sounds like you may be objecting to the non-specific nature of “hard-hitting” as much as anything. Does that seem right?
In another context, hard-hitting would mean you leave someone shocked or incapacitated. Hard-hitting news would knock you back for a second, hard-hitting attacks would leave you wondering what happened, that sort of thing. Not really what you’re going for with the home page.
Maybe something along the lines of “instantly recognizable”, “focused”, or “purposeful” would better describe what you’re looking for? Those are just general ideas.
The other way you might go would be to tailor it to the client a bit. The home page should not only make it clear what the company does but also give a feel for their take on the service and what they find important.
RoomStore and Restoration Hardware both sell furniture, but you get a feel for how they go about it from the front page and that reflects their target market. If you’re looking for one or the other you’d instantly know if you were in the wrong place.
So in a proposal for RoomStore you might describe a “branded home page focusing on the latest sales and offers” where Restoration Hardware might be a “a clean, elegant home page with opportunities to present the latest collections, company catalogs, and selected viewpoints of interest to visitors”...
(I’m making this up on the fly, but you get the idea)
Attention-riveting
Compelling
Seductive
Home page with modern dynamic design
Instant appeal, with clear text and punchy graphics??
Surfers decide in one-twentieth of a second whether to stay on a commercial site. @ETpro Web Marketing Services designs pages that grab prospective customers’ attention just like that!
I believe in educating customers, defining a problem, and providing a solution—just like that! ;-)
GOAL(S) – Go And Lengthy (Stay)
How about this:
“1. Home page with eye-grabbing graphics and invigorating text to sell, sell, sell SITENAME’s products.”
All great ideas. Thanks, and GAs for all. I need to mull on this, but what I have now has to go. @funkdaddy nailed what I don’t like about that wording. And @wundayatta is probably right that I need to work the one-twentieth of a second thing right into that bullet point.
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