8 sections you need to create the best homepage design

Why your homepage design is important

Today we’re going to be talking about a formula you can follow in order to have the best homepage design so you can make more money and serve more people.

Let’s talk a little bit about the formula that one might follow if you wanted to get a regular job – A non-mompreneur job, a 9-5 job. What would you need?

You typically need some type of education. You typically need some sort of experience. You’ll need references. You’ll need a resume. You’ll hopefully get an interview. The way that you present yourself is important. During that interview, there will be certain things you will need to convey to them. You’ll need to be telling them how you will serve them. Why you’re the right person and why they should choose you over someone else and exactly how things will be different for them if they do hire you. These are the goals of a job interview.

This is a general formula that we follow as a society in order to get a good job. But there is a formula you can follow to do the same thing with your website homepage. 

I want you to think of your website homepage as an opportunity to get in front of a potential employer. I want you to think of it like that interview. If you were trying to get a corporate job and you have an interview, your homepage is that interview. But why?

Your homepage is not their introduction to you

Somehow we get the idea that our homepage is where people first meet us or first get to know us. This is not true. It is not very often true.

Typically people go to your homepage because they had a friend who told them about you, so they type it in directly. Or maybe they’ve gotten to know you a little on Instagram and they went to your bio and they’ve clicked over to your homepage. Or maybe they found you on Pinterest, through a blog post that you wrote about a very specific topic. They’ve read through that blog post and now they’re like, “Hmm, I want to know more about her.” So they go to your homepage.

Most of the time when someone goes to your homepage, it’s because they have already decided that they like you. All those other things, those are your resume: your Instagram profile, an article you put on Pinterest, a blog post, you have a friend who told somebody about you. Those are all your resume.

Visitors who land on your homepage, they’ve read the resume and they’re like, “I want to interview this person.” And they click over to your homepage. Your homepage is the interview. That is where you get to showcase all of the things that you would showcase in an interview: your education, your experience, your references,  the way you present yourself.

That’s why your homepage needs to look good. All of that is going to be showcased on your homepage and I’m going to give you the formula for the best way to nail this interview.

The 8 sections you need on your homepage to create the best homepage design

There are eight sections that you need to have on your homepage. I have given them what I believe to be fairly memorable names in order to help you.

1. Magnet
2. FOMO
3. Transformation
4. Your Process
5. Connection.
6. Credibility
7. Work With Me
8. Lead Magnet

#1 – The magnet section

If you think about what a magnet does, it does two things.  It attracts and it repels. If you’ve ever played with magnets and you put the wrong ends together, you know they repel and if you put the right ends together, they attract. This is what you’re trying to do in your magnet section.

You need to be very specific about who it is you help and how you help them. So specific that if the wrong person lands on your website, the person who you aren’t good at helping, the person who will not appreciate what you have to offer, you are going to repel them.

This sounds scary, but I promise you it isn’t. You do not want the wrong people on your email list. It’s going to lower your open rate. You do not want the wrong people to sign up for a consult with you because it’s just going to frustrate you. They’re going to ask for more than you’re willing to give. They’re going to ask questions you don’t know the answers to.

You’ve got to know your people and you’ve got to tell them the moment they land on your website, the very top of it in this magnet section, exactly who you help, why you help them,  how you help them. It needs to be very clear and succinct.

#2 – The FOMO Section

We know what FOMO means, right? Fear of missing out. You’re almost always trying to create an emotion with each one of these sections. In the FOMO section, you are trying to create FOMO with them.

I don’t mean this in a mean way. I don’t mean this in a manipulative way. That’s a better word. We’re not trying to manipulate people, but we are trying to paint a picture of what they will be missing if they don’t work for you. And we do this because we care about them, because we want them to have the transformation that we want to give them.

We want to teach them and help them with the problem that they have. And we want to make it very, very clear that if they don’t solve this problem, their life isn’t going to be as good as it could be. So in this FOMO section, you’re going to talk about what they will miss out on, what their life will look like if they choose not to work with you.

#3 – The Transformation Section

Now, depending on what’s going on in your industry, you can flip these. Make the transformation your second section and the FOMO your third section. So if there’s a lot of energy around your topic about fear and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen, then you want the FOMO section to be first. If there’s more energy of – very positive, optimistic, I am a go getter, I want to get these amazing things – then you want your transformation section to be first. 

But your transformation section is going to show them what their life will look like if they choose to work with you. So it’s the opposite of the FOMO section. It’s how will their life transform and change and become better if they choose to work with you? How will they feel? What will they have more of in their life? What will they have less of in their life if they choose to work with you? 

#4 – The Process Section

So after they’ve read these two sections about what they’re going to miss out on and what they’re going to gain if they do or don’t work with you, they’re probably going to be thinking, “Okay, but what does it really look like to work with her? What do I have to do in order to work with her?”

I want you to keep this process section very, very, very simple. This is something that has been hard for me to wrap my brain around.  But I have learned it from Donald Miller, creator of StoryBrand. He is like the expert of all experts with making sure that your copy is extremely effective. He says this should be no more than a three-step process. And it should be very, very high level.

People don’t need all the details at this point. They get those details after they book a consult with you or after they sign up for your email list. But here on your homepage, you simply want it to be very, very simple.

You could say something like “Join my email list” or “Learn more about my topic.” So for me, “join my email list” or “learn more about building an effective website” and then last “choose how I can best help you.” It is very high level and very simple. 

#5 – The Connection Section

So they have now learned that they’re in the right place. They weren’t repelled by your magnet. They learned what they’re going to miss out on if they don’t work with you, what they’re going to gain if they do work with you and what that process looks like.

Now they’re probably wondering, “well, why should I work with her specifically?”

If you were to go get an interview for a corporate job, your interviewer is going to want to know this. They’re going to want to know why they should hire you instead of the person they’re interviewing right before or right after you.

There are a plethora of people online and your followers, your people, they want to know why you? You’re going to tell them this in the credibility section, why are you the right person? What makes you different? Why do you understand them better than anybody else?

Number six is kind of part of this connection section, I like to pull it out and make it a little bit separate because your connection section, it’s where you connect with them. It’s your story. You want to help them feel understood in the connection section and then in the  credibility section, you want them to learn and know that you’ve got the skills necessary to help them.

Hope you can see that difference there because it’s important and both need to be available.

#6 – The Credibility Section

So, what do you put in this section?

You can put a testimonial, social proof that you have helped someone else by putting a testimonial on there, you can put something like As Seen On. So if you’ve been interviewed on a podcast or if you’ve written a blog article for somebody or anything like that. You can put a certification badge. If you’ve been certified from the Life Coach School, you could put that certification badge on there. Those are the types of things you want in your credibility section.

#7 – Work With Me

Just like the process section you want to keep this far more simple than you may feel inclined to initially. We do not want your homepage to be crazy long. Your homepage is not a full sales page. 

For example, on my homepage, under my Work With Me section, I have two options. I have Done For You or Done With You. I’m giving them one simple choice. They can click on the done for you button, or they can click on the done with you button. And then they’re taken to another page that goes into more detail about the different ways they can work with me.

So with done for you, I can design your entire website for you. With done with you, you can join Tech Check and I can simply answer the questions you have as you build your own website. I’ll give them those options on those other pages. But my homepage has just a very simple explanation.

Now, if you only have one product, only one way to get involved with you, you could put that product there and just a very simple explanation of that product. And then, “buy now” or “learn more” or whatever.

If you have a shop of products, they could go to your shop and add multiple different products to their cart, you can link to your shop there, just one button that says “shop.” It’s giving them a way to spend money with you. That’s the point of this section. “I’m ready to spend my money. How do I do it? What are my choices?” That’s what you want to put here.

#8 – Lead Generator Section

This is where you offer them a freemium. So if they’ve gotten all the way through your page and whether they did or did not sign up to pay you money, you still want to get them on your email list so that you have a way to contact them  in the future.

If somebody comes to your website and that’s it, they just read your homepage and they weren’t ready to buy, Well, guess what? You’ve just lost them, if you don’t have a way for them to join your email list.

Remember on average, it’s going to take seven times before somebody is ready to purchase. So if somebody comes from to your homepage, because a friend has told them about you. They’ve had one interaction with you and then a second as they read your homepage, right? And they might still not quite be ready to purchase from you.

If they come from social media and they’ve interacted with you for six months, they might come to your homepage and be ready to purchase. So you want that option on there.

You want the purchase now option on there, but you also want to have the option for them to join your email list so that you can continue to support and help them and get them to a place where they are ready to give you money and buy.

You need this in order to make sure you have the best homepage design

The last thing you need to know about your homepage is that each of these sections needs to have a Call to Action. Most often it should be the same call to action.

At the end of every section, you could invite them to join your email list, or you could invite them at the end of every section to sign up for a free coaching call, or you could invite them at the end of every section to sign up for a very inexpensive product. You don’t want to be pushing a $500 product right there on your homepage. That’s further up your value ladder, but you could give them an inexpensive $9, $12, $15 product. 

Every single section needs a call to action. And I want you to repeat that same call to action over and over again on your homepage, all of these sections. Because you remember that we, as humans, need that repetition before we are ready to act.

Some people are going to be ready to act the moment they land on that homepage and they need a call to action right up there at the top, because they don’t want to read through the whole thing. They are ready to act.

Other people are still learning a little bit more about you and you want to have that call to action all the way through. Maybe after they read the FOMO section they’re like, “Oh yeah, I don’t want to miss out.” They need a button to click on.

Maybe they’re not ready until later in the connection section. They think, “Oh, she gets me. She really understands me.” Then they’re ready to act. You need a call to action button there. That is important.

Learn More about the 8 sections you need on your homepage design

If you would like to learn more about these eight sections and watch me apply these concepts to a real client’s website, then you need to attend my free Homepage Makeover Masterclass.

You are going to learn three things:

1. The questions your homepage must answer if you want to make money
2. What not to put on your homepage
3. The reason your website is not currently making you money

Then you’re going to watch me transform somebody’s website, somebody who has the same problems and hang ups that you do, because they are very common. We all make the same mistakes. You’re going to watch me fix all that for her so that her website is built in a way to make her money.

If you really want your website to make you money and serve more people, these 8 sections will give you the best homepage design and will help you stand out from those pre-made websites.