How to get your title and sub-header right.

One of the issues we see is that the headline refers to things the Founder of the brand already knows; which of course the actual customer doesn’t. The Curse of Knowledge is a hard one to break, and to be honest this is the biggest issue we see on websites; they’ve been written and built by someone who already knows, likes and loves the product. Try this – write down the headline and sub headline on your website – in other words, the main titles someone will see on your homepage when they visit – and show them to someone who doesn’t know your site. Do they know what you’re selling? If not, you should probably rewrite.

Here’s a simple template to follow to rewrite your homepage title.

Headline: What the product is and why it’s different

Sub-header: What benefit the product brings to the customer (ideally in a way which helps them to imagine a future positive state.)

Examples:

Product: Vitamin Supplement to support recovery from colds

Headline: Immediate help to get on top of your cold

Sub-header: Don’t miss the party this Christmas.

(obviously this is a seasonal message which you’d change as you go)

Product: Fibre bars to promote gut health

Headline: A third of your daily fi bre in one delicious bar

Sub–header: A tasty way to eat yourself healthy.

Product: Healthy ready meals for kids.

Headline: Children’s ready-meals; all the taste, none of the guilt.

Sub-header: Food they like, none of the nasty stuff you don’t — dinner is sorted.

(This last one is a bit wordy — I’d probably remove some of the text and replace it with an image of a happy kid eating their food themselves, a future state all parents of young children aspire to!)

Clearly none of these are as good as if you had a full branding and copywriting team working on it. But that’s not what we’re aiming for — we’re just aiming to get you out of your own viewpoint and be able to write something good yourself.

For more advice on how to improve your conversion rate yourself – try our book on CRO.