Your homepage headline has one job. Tell a stranger what you do and why it matters to them, fast enough that they keep reading.
Most headlines fail at that job. Not because the owner can't write. Because the headline is trying to be clever, or it's about the company instead of the customer.
Here are three before-and-after examples, the one sentence underneath all of them, and a ten-minute exercise to rewrite yours.
The businesses are made up. They're here to show the pattern, not to report results.
Why the first few words carry so much weight
People scan. They don't read.
Nielsen Norman Group found that when people scan, they often take in only the first couple of words of a line before deciding whether to keep going (First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye). Their earlier study found most people scan a new page rather than read it (How Users Read on the Web).
For a headline, that means the customer's problem or outcome goes at the front. Not after a warm-up.
Example 1: a cleaning company
Solutions built around you.
Keep your office clean without doing it yourself.
The before could belong to a bank, a software company, or a florist. The after names the result (a clean office) and the relief (without doing it yourself). A facilities manager knows in two seconds whether to keep reading.
Example 2: a bookkeeper
Passionate about numbers. Focused on you.
Bookkeeping for trades businesses, so tax time is boring.
"Passionate" is about the bookkeeper. The after is about the customer. Who it's for, and what gets better.
Naming the customer narrows things on purpose. A plumber reading it feels seen. A restaurant owner moves on. That's fine. The bookkeeper doesn't want that work anyway.
Example 3: a dog trainer
Where every dog is family.
Stop the pulling, jumping and barking. In-home training for dogs in St. Paul.
The before is a feeling. The after lists the problems the customer is living with right now, then says where and how.
Notice the location. For a local service it belongs in the headline or the line right under it.
The one sentence underneath
Write this first, plainly:
We help [who] with [what], so they can [result].
Then make it sound like you.
Some headlines keep the whole sentence. Others put the result in the headline and the who and what in the line beneath, like the cleaning example. Both work. What doesn't work is skipping the who or the result.
Two tests before you publish:
- Could a competitor use this headline unchanged? If yes, it's not specific enough.
- Does a stranger know what you do after reading it once? Ask someone who doesn't know your business, and take their first answer.
The ten-minute exercise
- Write your current headline at the top of a page.
- Under it, fill in the pattern. Who, what, result. One version, plain.
- Write three more. Lead with the result, then with the problem, then with the customer.
- Read each one out loud. Cut any word that isn't earning its place.
- Pick one. Show it to one person who doesn't know your business and ask, "What do we do?"
If they can tell you, publish it.
If they can't, the words are still too clever. Go plainer. Boring and clear beats clever and vague every single time (speaking from experience).
After the headline
The headline is the first of five things worth checking on a service website. The others are the button, the order of the page, the proof, and the contact path. The free guide below walks through all five with before-and-after pages and room to write your own.
A 14-page PDF: five fixes, before-and-after examples, and a one-page action sheet. Download it now, no lessons unless you ask.
Show Me the 5 Fixes →