Hello Barry
Congratulations on your new, very professional looking web site!
Last week I attended a teleseminar by Google on the 7 sins of landing pages. Here they are. I`m going through my home page with this checklist. You may find it helpful too.
1. unclear call for action. A clear call to action needs to be above "the fold", in the top 2/3 of the page. What do you want people to do? It depends on their "level of engagement"--how well do they know you? If they`ve never heard of you, they may not be prepared to buy from you, so a lower level call to action is good like a newsletter sign-up. Clear wording for exactly what you want them to do.
You also don`t want conflicting calls for action or too many calls for action. Distracting.
2. too many choices of what to do, what to see. People get distracted and can`t decide.
3. asking for too much info. Unclutter your forms. Take out unnecessary fields. Don`t ask for info that the visitor doesn`t have readily available.
4. too much text so visitors think, "Do you expect me to read all that?" Need less detail, clear headlines. Don`t need to use complete sentences. Edit to shorten text. Less is more. The more you cut text, the more attention and action from visitors.
5. not keeping your promises. When they come from somewhere to your site, they may have expectations. Not good if there is a disconnect between what they expected and what they find on your site, if they can`t find what they came to look for. Repeat Google ad words on web page.
Do not use stock photos. Yours are better. People recognize stock photos.
6. visual distractions like flashing images, moving images. Unclutter pages. Use non serif fonts like Ariaal. Minimize number of font sizes, colours, bolding, underlining.
7. lack of trust. They have never heard of you. Lack of proof to reassure visitors. Privacy statements good. Media coverage good. Testimonials. Anything to remove anxiety and build trust.
The home page`s job is to lead visitors to other pages in the site relevant for them. Must tell about trust issues on home page. Then people reach the relevant page for them and say, "Wow! This is just what I was looking for!"
On first glance, I found your home page professional looking but too busy, too many choices for me. I wasn`t sure what you wanted me to do, what you were offering. I`d edit the home page back and give clear choices of buttons or menus to click for what you want visitors to do for your various services/information.
Hope this helps!
All the best,
Margaret
www.italycookingschools.com
