Digital Healthcare Marketing

The Question Your Homepage Must Answer in 15 Seconds

Your homepage only has seconds to grab and hold the attention of visitors. Unfortunately, too many healthcare vendors have failed to grasp this reality and have homepages that are driving visitors away. The cause is not bad graphics, confusing layouts, or poor site navigation. It is because their homepage fails to answer a key question: “What do you do?”

Not a Lot of Time

A long time ago, when the Internet was still young, visitors would spend time exploring a new website. They would scroll slowly through the homepage to read about a company and even click on a few of the interesting options on the navigation menu.

Those days are long gone.

In 2014, Chartbeat analyzed 2 billion website visits and found that 55% of those visitors spent less than 15 seconds actively on a page. That’s not a lot of time to grab a visitor’s attention. They key is not great graphics, a background video, or a slick navigation bar – it’s answering a simple question that most visitors to a B2B website have: What do you do?

B2B Homepage Visitors

Why is this question the key? Because if you consider who is visiting your company’s homepage, this is the question they are seeking to answer.

If you think about it, when do people visit a company’s website? I would argue, it is because:

  • They saw your booth at a conference
  • They got a card from a company representative at networking event
  • They heard your company name during a presentation or podcast
  • They clicked on a link to your homepage from an article on a trusted site
  • They were given your company name by a peer or manager and asked to find out more

In any of the above situations, the burning question in my mind is: What do you do?

If what you do matches what I am looking for, then I will stay and continue to explore your site. If I can’t figure out what you do in 15s then I will leave your site and will not likely return.

Note: Google Ads, banner ads, emails and social posts rarely point visitors to the homepage. Instead, most direct visitors to specially designed landing pages.

Benefits and Outcomes

As marketers, we have been taught to focus on benefits and outcomes rather than features and functionality. The old adage: “People don’t want to buy a drill, they want a hole” always comes to mind whenever I sit down to write marketing copy.

We have to resist this desire to just talk about benefits when designing a homepage. We have to get right to the point and explain what we do so that we don’t ask a visitor to do too much work.

Examples

Consider this homepage:

This homepage does an excellent job at talking about the outcomes that you can expect from adopting their solution. Unfortunately, it gives no indication about what the company does. Is it a revenue cycle management solution? Is it a consulting company? Is it a specialty EHR? In fact, the company isn’t any of those.

In contrast, here is a homepage that highlighting the benefits the company provides AND describes what they do in less than 15 seconds.

 

Right from the first headline, I know what TigerConnect does. The subtitle in the hero banner makes it even more clear – “collaboration suite”. And then beneath the fold, the first section spells it out – “TigerConnect solutions make healthcare communications easy by putting information, data, and alerts in the hands of care teams.”

In 15 seconds I know what the company does, some of the benefits they help achieve, and the healthcare organizations that have chosen them.

Don’t Wait

There is no time like the present to take a critical look at your homepage. Pretend you are someone who has been handed a business card from one of your salespeople at an event and now you are visiting your homepage to find out more about the company. Does your homepage answer the question of what you do?

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is an award-winning Marketing Executive with more than 15yrs of healthcare and HealthIT experience. He co-founded one of the most popular healthcare chats on Twitter, #hcldr and he has been recognized as one of the “Top 50 Healthcare IT Influencers”. Colin’s work has been published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, American Society for Healthcare Risk Managers, and Infection Control Today. He writes regularly for Healthcare Scene and here at HITMC.com. Colin is a member of #pinksock #TheWalkingGallery and is proudly HITMC. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

1 Comment

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  • Thanks for this, Colin! It’s so true and I can’t believe how many sites aren’t designed with these basics! I would add: make it easy for each target audience/persona to navigate in 1-click to extremely relevant content, as well.

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