Home/landing page letter

A viable approach for landing-page quality?

[jtara]

I wanted to share a fairly unique homepage approach that I noticed being used by a top (blue box) advertiser in a particular product field. I came across this as a buyer of this product.

There's been some discussion here about including "why you should buy from us" information on a site. Well, here it is right on the home page.

Although this particular advertiser uses this approach only on their home page, perhaps it could also be used on landing pages (actually, it IS their landing page when you search on their company name - but when you search on a product you get the product page), and/or having this on your home page may influence Google's view of your site quality.

What they have done is to put a short "letter to our customers" at the top of their home page.

I'm including it below, with edits to remove their identity and the identity of the product.

Dear Customer,

Widget Systems has been supplying widget products and related components to the widget Industry since 1997.

We are an active member of the Widget Quality Association and the Greater Elbonia Better Business Bureau (BBB). We also participate in the Better Business Bureau's Online Reliability Program to help promote ethical online ecommerce practices.

Our goal is to make purchasing products and replacement parts for your widget equipment as simple as point and click. We offer no nonsense, below list, pricing and same day shipping on most in-stock orders, received prior to 2 PM EST - Mon-Fri.. [ed. note - that would be Elbonia Standard Time, of course...]

We stock a wide range of popular installation and replacement components for End Users, Manufacturers and Professional Installers, as well as the Do-It-Yourself Home Owner. Our online catalog is growing daily. However, if you need an item that is not listed, or would like to request a quotation for any product that is listed, please fill out our RFQ Form HERE.

Sincerely,

John Doe

President/CEO

The rest of the home page is a simple listing of product categories, with a straight-forward site navigation menu to the left.

It's not a particularly pretty site. But it gets right down to business, is easy to navigate, and they do have great prices to boot.

[opifex]

.... and the page is probably high in a widget search .... the information is there and presented in words...novel concept these days..... short - to the point - and sells widgets!

[netmeg]

We ALWAYS tell our web clients that their home page MUST express:

1) WHO they are (including WHERE if they are geographically limited in scope)

2) WHAT they do (it always amazes me how many web pages I visit where I can't make out exactly WHAT the company does on the home page - and I consider myself to be smarter than the average bear)

3) WHY they're better at it than anyone else on the net, or what sets them apart from anyone else in the field, be it price, availability, commitment to service, etc.

AND they need to do it all in 100 to 300 words. I've always considered it to be kind of a given - Home Page 101.

[rbacal]

On most of our product pages, and on the buying/cart pages we have included a right hand sidebar which is fairly similar. It's designed to help customers have confidence in us, mentions how long we've been in business, and provides other information to assure people we aren't just another web site seller.

Of course, some of those pages are our landing pages for adwords.

(the challenge is using the web real estate, stay focused on the product, and reassure in limited space.)

[netmeg]

(not to mention finding people who can *write*)

[pdivi]

I get a chuckle out of hearing the words 'always' and 'must' in reference to page design. Having seen thousands of sites optimized for performance, and having seen how differently they turn out depending on product, customer, company, referrer, ..., I can't imagine how any rule-of-thumb could possibly hold across all clients. I'm not saying the company intro is a bad idea, I'm just saying it's not a sacred truth.

A viable approach for the Adwords QS and a design that optimizes performance are two very different things.