[EASY] Spruce Up Your Membership Homepage with These Design Tips

This Tip of the Week covers topics including:

• 1:08 – 1) Compelling Hero Title, Slogan or Motto
• 4:02 – 2) List Your Website’s Benefits
• 6:32 – 3) Testimonials From Your Members
• 13:07 – 4) Lead Magnet / Free Offer
• 18:11 – 5) Provide Access to Free Resources
• 24:45 – Sample Homepage

This is a segment from Webinar Wednesday 87, recorded live on April 22, 2020.

Designing a membership website’s homepage can be confusing for first-timers. Many homepages lack the balance aspect, where they include too many or too few elements.

There are five important elements that you should have on your website’s homepage. These are the basics, yet it’s common for us all to overlook them.

Here is a sneak peek into what elements a homepage should have…

1) Compelling Hero Title, Slogan or Motto

Knowing how to write a hero title for your membership homepage can increase the click-through rate tremendously.

The most important thing here is to connect emotionally with the people who visit the homepage. Thus, whatever slogan you can coin, it should have an emotional appeal.

What does it make them feel?

To do this, you must keep in mind the audience that you want to appeal to and their emotional status among other factors. You must also think about their needs and in your compelling slogan, let them know that you will help them fulfill those needs.

When being cognizent of your homepage title displaying in search engine results, you should use words that have a high click-through rate. For example, research shows that the words photo, who, and need have a high click-through and conversion rate.

Putting words in parenthesis can also help attain a high click-through rate.

2) List Your Website’s Benefits

Getting traffic to your homepage is one thing. Getting visitors to stay on the page is trickier, but not impossible!

You can make them stay by telling them the benefits that they stand to gain from the site. You want the new visitors to know what they will get from the site. If you tell them the benefits that they stand to gain, they will be more likely to create an account on your website.

Let the user know the benefits directly. A good way to do this is to include a short list with the title “Free Member Benefits,” “Premium Member Benefits,” and so on.

On the homepage, highlight some of the features and benefits that visitors stand to gain from your community.

3) Testimonials from Your Members

Nothing beats member testimonials on the homepage of your membership site. The testimonial should be genuine, so you need to ask existing members to leave a testimonial or review.

Of course, you can give them an incentive to leave a testimonial, like offering them a few months of free membership.

Make sure that the testimonial is not just a block of text because that may not look genuine and if it does, visitors might not read it. Also, try to ask the person leaving the testimonial for a picture of themselves to include with it. This can be a real photo or a simple avatar. Either way, some sort of “profile photo” with the testimonial will help visitors connect with it.

To get a member to leave a testimonial, you need to know the right time to ask. Look for key performance indicators. If a member has achieved something on the site, they might be more willing to leave a testimonial than when they are experiencing frustration with something.

Remember to ask some of your members to leave video testimonials as well. Video testimonials have a higher appeal and trustworthiness than audio or text ones.

4) Lead Magnet / Free Offer

The primary goal of your website is to collect as many email addresses as possible. Build an email list, welcome the email subscribers, and then waiting for the appropriate time to follow up with an offer to join your community.

Some of the freebies that you can offer include free membership for a limited time. You can also offer them a free PDF ebook download, a free profile/listing audit, etc.

Although some visitors might not sign up to your website immediately, they do still have a need for what you’re offering. After all, that is why they came to your website.

If you understand your target audience, you should be able to ascertain some of their needs. You can meet them quarter-way with a free eBook, a free guide and so on, in exchange for their email address.

5) Provide Access to Free Resources

On the homepage, let the visitors know that they can access free resources on your website that would be of actual value to them.

You already know the needs that have brought these visitors to your website. Now, you need to find out what free resource you can offer them – one that offer them value and meets their needs in order to establish a level of trust. Ideally, this will help entice them to become a paying member at some point.

Free resources don’t only have to be eBooks and downloadable PDFs. They can also be blog articles or videos with a wealth of information… anything that offers value to your target demographic.

Conclusion

Those are the five most important elements of a membership homepage. The only thing remaining is to arrange them in the most appealing manner.

You do not want your homepage to appear too cluttered with images, colors and text blocks. Minimalism is easier on the eyes, and on the brain.

Using the right membership website builder helps a lot. You can easily add images, dividers, create tables and do much more.

To get more tips on how to build a perfect membership homepage, click HERE to visit our blog.