The following is guidance on writing the text for your home page

Your main heading must contain the words that someone searching for your product or service will type into a search engine form

Let other people say how good you are

Put a short positive quote from one of your clients at the top of the page. This will help establish you as a credible source for the products or services you offer. Here is an example,

“Jim has recently completed my website and I have to say I am delighted with it. The results are professional, informative and also fashionable....” Kathy Sharp, KAS Personal Shopping and corporate gifts

Don't make up testimonials, everyone can spot false testimonials a mile away. If you don't have any, now is the time to ask your current and past customers if they will provide you with one. Remember to explain that you will be using it in your marketing material.

Your first paragraph

Your first paragraph has an important job to do - both for human visitors and for the search engines indexing the content of your site. For humans this paragraph will describe who you are, what (and who) your site is for, and the service or products you offer. For search engines it will contain words and phrases that help the search engine classify your site - so it can be found by relevant searchers.

This is difficult to do in a single paragraph (in truth you may have to write more than one to do the job), however it is important you get it right, so put aside time to work seriously on this task. Again this text must contain the words and phrases that you think people will type into a search engine to find your product or service. Here is an example,
 

“Jim Byrne is a Glasgow based web designer with over a decade of experience developing accessible, great looking and easy to maintain websites. He use modern practices (e.g., web standards) to ensure that clients sites are well organised, fast to load and work on all browsers. He specialises in the UK public, voluntary and education sectors.”

Provide information about your most important services or products

Although you will provide more detailed information on your services (or products) page, you still need to outline what you have to offer on your home page. Visitors have arrived at your website, they don't want their time wasted, so in clear language outline your products or services. Provide plenty of details - at least three or four paragraphs worth. This information is for both search engines and for humans, so remember to include phrases you think people will type into search engines to find the stuff that you offer.

Ask for contact details

It is highly unlikely that a first time visitor to your website will buy your product or service; why would they, they don't know you and probably don't yet trust  you.

The job of your website therefore is to capture contact information from visitors, so you can build a business relationship with them - and in the process demonstrate that you do know what you are talking about and will provide a good service or product. The way to do that is to ask them to register for your newsletter or a useful tip related to the topic they search for.

Don't let them get away, get their contact details, so you can keep in touch and demonstrate you can offer what they need. For example,