Writing copy for a website’s homepage is a tricky business. There are many challenges. The copy needs to grab browsers attention, maintain interest, explain, intrigue and support a group of second level pages.

There’s no right or wrong way to achieve this. Some companies even decide to ditch content for beautiful images, it all depends on your company’s target audience and key messaging.
Here are a few tips to nail your homepage copy:

Do it last

Only approach your homepage once all the other website copy is in place. Your homepage is a synopsis of the site as a whole, so you can’t write about something that does not exist yet.

Once the rest of the site’s words are in place, grab key elements and start writing your homepage.

Bottoms up

Build your homepage from the bottom up. From the heart of the page’s content to the introduction of your page and then the title. Writing a homepage is effectively a process of distilling down your company’s vision and ethos.

The headline

First-time visitors arrive at your site with a clear purpose in mind. They are looking for something.
Your headline must clearly and quickly communicate quickly the primary value proposition of your site.

In other words, you must explain why is it better than all the competing sites out there offering similar services or products.

This is a tough job and you need to cut down the waffle. Remove adjectives and adverbs. Stay focused. Understand what your audience is looking for. Communicate that promise and your value as clearly and quickly as possible.

Clarify headlines with introductory text

It is impossible to communicate ever value proposition in ten words or less. If you have a business that offers a number of different products or services, keep your headline simple and then use some short introductory text to expand your message and clarify its meaning.

Put this introductory text beneath your headline so it flows. You need to be aware of your readers’ eyepath. For example, if you want someone to read a block of text immediately after reading your headline, place it within the same column, with the same margins, one following directly after the other.

Give visitors help finding what they want

You must help visitors find the second-level page that best matches their immediate interest. It’s an obvious point but homepages are often cluttered with too many features and links.

If 90% of your visitors end up visiting two or three second-level pages first, make links to these pages as obvious as possible on the homepage.

Build trust

Unless you are a globally recognized brand, visitors may feel unsure about your business.

Give them reassurance. Your copy can achieve this through the tone of your headline and other text on the homepage. Don’t be too blatant or salesy in your approach. Write in simple, clear and honest language to draw visitors in. Go for the hard sell on second level pages – not a visitor’s first port of call.
 
In conclusion...

There are many other elements to writing a great homepage, but these points cover the basics. When I write a homepage, I aim for simplicity and clarity. I keep the end user in mind and want them to feel confident that they have come to the right place.

If you need help with your web copy, drop me a line at [email protected]. I can take the horror of writing a homepage away.

As Dr Jessica Kirkpatrick cleaned her research equipment as a then-undergraduate, a senior member of the team walked by and quipped: "That’s what women are good for, washing dishes in the kitchen".

Charming.

This is one of the less threatening stories of harassment that have hit the Twitter feeds under the hashtag #astroSH. The outpouring has continued throughout January as women share their tales of sexual harassment in academia.

This Twitter storm comes amid two high-profile incidents of sexism accusations against male university professors. Geoffrey Marcy, a prominent astronomer at Berkeley, resigned after he was found guilty of sexually harassing students last year. And last week, BuzzFeed, Nature and Science all reported a case involving a California Institute of Technology professor placed on unpaid leave for “unambiguous gender-based harassment.”

My heart goes out to every person who has used the #astroSH over the last few weeks. I worked in academia, admittedly for a very short period, and never experienced such sexism. I found the academic environments of York and Cambridge Universities to be innovative and engaging. 

Then, I saw this write up on British astronaut Tim Peake. It's a spoof Facebook post from Dylan Beattie, aka TheManWhoHasItAll, in which Dylan took an official NASA portrait of Peake, and wrote the accompanying text: 

Sadly, Dylan's post isn't far from reality. During a press conference in October, an all-female Russian team of astronauts were asked questions such as: "how will you cope without men or make-up for eight days?" And lets not forget that Dr Helen Sharman was actually the first Briton in space.

This joke post struck a chord for me as a science and technology writer. The language we use to describe women in science and technology hints towards indirect sexism. It is based on pragmatics and the meaning and interpretation of utterances. It is also very common and we need a new way to challenge and analyse the way we speak about women in the science and tech sector, and wider world.

I'm not alone. The sexism row has prompted Oxford Dictionaries to review the language they use in definitions. Phrases such as "rabid feminist" and "the rising shrill of women’s voices" could soon be removed. Academic studies have even uncovered such issues, including science faculty's subtle gender bias to favour CVs with a male, as oppose to female, name at the top.

Others have suggested that the supposed need to "lure" women into science is downright patronising and please don't get me started on IBM's "hack a hair-dryer" campaign, with the implication that women will be drawn to solving problems if they involve beauty appliances.

It’s almost as though, despite recognising the apparent sexism within the scientific community, we haven’t  come to grips with the root causes of such bias.

The scientific community is dominated by a narrow slice of the world's demographics. Some argue that humour can be used to build a bridge between demographics. But it can also reinforce negative stereotypes when used in a negative manner.

A scientific review looked into sexist and other discriminatory disparaging humour and concluded that jokes do not create hostility where it does not already exist. The report also found that joking reinforces existing prejudice. Another report found that men exposed to sexist jokes were less likely to express support for actions that would improve gender equality.This does little to help those arguing that "it's only a joke" within the scientific workforce, as such sexism appears to already exist. 

Then there is the whole Tim Hunt saga. The Nobel laureate expressed ridiculous views on women working in laboratory environments and then attempted to pass the whole debacle as a joke. 

I'm not laughing.