Unless your website makes profits from selling adspace, you're more interested in sales than you are in getting traffic! When that's the case, it all begins with your so-called "Home" page. So, let's examine the components of a money making home page. I'm talking about the professional home pages that are built to generate sales like a power plant generates electricity!

Understanding your customer

Job one is to assess the desires of your typical customer. And always remember that you are speaking to only a single person at one time. Visitors arrive one by one–even when they arrive in bunches. And they buy based upon their wants–not necessarily based on their needs. Of course, we all want to be slim and trim, but what most of us need is to exercise. Regardless, if there were some credible way to Get Fit While You Sit we would sell a lot more copies of that book than one titled, Get Fit By Exercising Daily And Watching Your Diet.

The difference is, of course, that most people want an easy, no-sweat way to physically look good in spite of the fact that they really need to exercise and eat right to actually get fit. Of course the point is that if you try to give people what they need, while ignoring what they really want, your sales process will fail–miserably!

So, understanding your customer's wants is job one! Your home page should immediately proclaim...

What's in it for them!

...and then proceed to lend validity and credibility to whatever claims you make that solves your customer's problem(s) and satisfies their wants. Mind you, generic statements such as the ridiculously popular 'welcome to our homepage' waste space. They do not state any clear benefit and are arguably lame—especially in an SEO sense. Don't even consider such drivel for your homepage.

Instead, you should ruthlessly examine each and every sentence, paragraph, graphic, and section from the custom...