The Death of Welcome on the Web

Banish the welcome page on your website. In fact, banish any “welcome” copy all together. It’s totally superfluous. Besides, it annoys your viewers and makes you look unprofessional.

Your homepage is the only welcome your audience needs. Remember, web audiences are in a hurry. Within seconds, your viewers should be able to tell the purpose of your site. They don’t want to read any copy that doesn’t tell them who your are, what you have to offer, and how they can take action.

Your homepage is like a brochure in the print world. Have you ever seen a welcome section in a brochure? It would take up precious space, for one thing. The real estate on your website is no less precious.

When I googled “welcome,” I got about 638,000,000 results. Most of these are wasted; no one uses the word to search for a site unless welcome is relevant to the site name or purpose, such as “Welcome,” the title of a movie, and Welcome Wagon, a business.

I would venture to guess that “welcome” is one of the worst keywords on the web.

Your Audience Is Always Right

Successful marketing & communication require knowing who your audience members are & how to give them value. This is true whether you’re creating web content for a new business or crafting a script for a video designed to increase college enrollment.

Reaching an audience takes a writer, or editor, trained in looking at the project at hand from the audience’s viewpoint. Many websites, for instance, simply don’t work. Why? Because the web copy and design represent what the site owner wants to say, which often has little to do with what the viewer wants or needs to know.

You’ve seen it many times: sites that eat up valuable time with superfluous Flash intros, sites that make their purpose unclear, vanity sites that overemphasize site owner & underemphasize user functions, sites containing too much written copy.

User studies show that if you don’t grab your viewer within seconds, he or she will likely click off your site. That’s because audiences, your users, don’t want to waste time. Think of when you’re on the web looking for products or information or trying to complete a task. Ever feel you have time to waste? Rarely? Never? Your users are just like you.

More about Audiences:

Too close to your website, too far from your customers

Making the customer CEO