Module 6 workshop: audit and rewrite your home page

What you will be able to do

• Record a baseline and score your home page against ten criteria
• Rewrite the hero and rebuild the sections below in a proven order
• Measure the change in inquiry rate after 90 days, allowing for seasonality

Your home page is the page most visitors see first and the one most businesses rewrite least. This workshop takes you through a complete audit and rewrite in one focused working day, using everything in this module. You will measure where you start, score the page against a checklist, rewrite it section by section, fix speed and accessibility, and set up a simple way to see whether the new version brings in more inquiries. Lantern & Lane’s rewrite is the worked model throughout.

Read the transcript

Module 6 workshop: audit and rewrite your home page.

Your home page is the page most visitors see first and the one most businesses rewrite least.

This workshop takes you through a complete audit and rewrite in one focused working day, using everything in this module.

Step 1: Record your starting point.

You cannot tell whether a rewrite worked unless you know where you started.

Before you change anything, record:

Step 2: Score the page.

Score your current home page against these ten criteria.

Give 0 if it fails, 1 if it partly meets the criterion and 2 if it clearly meets it.

Step 3: Rewrite the top of the page.

Write the hero section using the formula from the first lesson of this module: a headline of who you serve plus the outcome, a subheadline of what you do plus where, one button and one proof line.

Write three versions of the headline and read them aloud to someone who fits your client profile.

Step 4: Rebuild the sections below.

Below the hero, the home page has one job: send each visitor to the right next page with enough confidence to keep going.

Use this order, and cut anything that does not fit.

Step 5: Fix speed and accessibility.

Resize and compress every image on the page; aim for a hero image of a few hundred kilobytes

Replace any slider with one strong image or a short silent loop

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

Step 1: Record your starting point

You cannot tell whether a rewrite worked unless you know where you started. Before you change anything, record:

• Monthly visitors to the home page, from your website analytics, averaged over the last three months
• Monthly inquiries from the site over the same period
• Your inquiry rate: inquiries divided by total site visitors
• Your PageSpeed Insights results on mobile: LCP, INP and CLS
• The answers five people give in the eight-second test
• A screenshot of the current page, on a phone and on a laptop

Lantern & Lane’s baseline: about 400 visitors a month, four inquiries a month, an inquiry rate of 1 percent, an LCP of over eight seconds, and eight-second test answers that included “a venue?” and “some kind of photographer”.

Step 2: Score the page

Score your current home page against these ten criteria. Give 0 if it fails, 1 if it partly meets the criterion and 2 if it clearly meets it.

Any criterion scoring 0 goes to the top of your list. Do not try to perfect the design first; the words and structure come first. Ask someone who has never booked you to score the page as well. Their score is usually lower than yours, and the gaps between the two tell you where you are filling in blanks the visitor cannot.

Step 3: Rewrite the top of the page

Write the hero section using the formula from the first lesson of this module: a headline of who you serve plus the outcome, a subheadline of what you do plus where, one button and one proof line. Write three versions of the headline and read them aloud to someone who fits your client profile. Keep the one they repeat back to you most accurately.

Lantern & Lane chose: “Two families, two traditions, one weekend that feels like everyone’s”, with “Wedding planning for multicultural couples in Toronto and Peel” beneath it, a “Check your date” button and the proof line “Eleven two-tradition weddings planned in the last two years”.

Step 4: Rebuild the sections below

Below the hero, the home page has one job: send each visitor to the right next page with enough confidence to keep going. Use this order, and cut anything that does not fit.

1. Who we help: two to four short cards, one per main service, each with a one-line outcome and a link.
2. Proof: one specific review, your Google rating with a link, and a number or two that matter.
3. How it works: three or four steps from first call to the event.
4. Featured work: one portfolio entry, with three photos and a link to the full story.
5. About, briefly: a photo of the people and two sentences, linking to the About page.
6. Three questions: the three most common concerns, answered briefly, such as service area, booking lead time and price range.
7. The final call: the same button as the top, with a line such as “Tell us your date and we will reply within one business day.”
8. Footer: business name, service area, contact details and links to every core and legal page.

Lantern & Lane’s cards are Two-Tradition Weddings, Wedding Planning and Corporate and Social Events. Their three questions are “Do you work outside Toronto?”, “How far ahead should we book?” and “What does planning cost?”, the last answered with a starting price and a link to the price sheet.

Step 5: Fix speed and accessibility

• Resize and compress every image on the page; aim for a hero image of a few hundred kilobytes
• Replace any slider with one strong image or a short silent loop
• Remove widgets and scripts the page does not need
• Check text contrast reaches at least 4.5 to 1 for body text
• Write alt text for every meaningful image
• Tab through the page to confirm every link and button can be reached
• Add captions to any video

Run PageSpeed Insights again and record the new numbers beside the old ones. Lantern & Lane’s mobile LCP fell from over eight seconds to under 2.5.

Step 6: Test, publish and measure

1. Run the eight-second test with five new people. If three cannot answer a question, revise before you publish.
2. Check the page on two phones and one laptop, and send yourself a test inquiry.
3. Publish, and note the date.
4. After 90 days, compare visitors, inquiries and inquiry rate with your baseline. Compare with the same months last year as well, because event demand is seasonal.

Here is the arithmetic Lantern & Lane used, with illustrative figures. In the 90 days after launch, the site had 1,260 visitors and 21 inquiries: an inquiry rate of 21 divided by 1,260, about 1.7 percent, against 1 percent before. At their 25 percent booking rate, nine extra inquiries a quarter would mean two or three extra bookings, worth roughly $14,500 at their average booking value of about $5,800. They put a date in the calendar to repeat the audit in six months.

Before you publish: a Canadian and Ontario check

Your home page brings together claims, prices, photos and forms, so it touches almost every rule covered in this course. Work through this list before the new version goes live.

• Claims. Under the Competition Act it is reviewable conduct to make a representation to the public that is false or misleading in a material respect, and Ad Standards judges truthfulness by the general impression an ad conveys. Check that every number in your proof line is true today and that you hold the evidence. Replace superlatives you cannot support with specific facts.
• Prices. Any starting price on the page must be attainable: every fixed mandatory fee included, with only taxes such as HST added on top. Make it match your price sheet exactly. The Competition Bureau’s drip pricing guidance sets out what it expects.
• Reviews. Use only genuine reviews from real clients. Employees and others with a material connection must not appear as impartial reviewers. If you show your Google rating, it must not have been built with incentives or by asking only happy clients.
• Photos. For photos taken on or after November 7, 2012, the photographer owns copyright by default unless a signed written agreement says otherwise. Confirm you have written permission for every image on the page and credit the photographers.
• Newsletter sign-up. If the page invites visitors to join your email list, use an unticked box or a field they fill in themselves. The CRTC says express consent cannot be obtained through opt-out mechanisms such as a pre-checked box.
• Business name. Use the same name in your header that appears on your Google Business Profile, which Google says must match your real-world name without added taglines, service descriptors or locations. Keep descriptive words for the headline.
• Privacy. Link your privacy policy from the footer and from any form. PIPEDA’s openness principle expects you to make your practices available.
• Accessibility. If you have 50 or more employees in Ontario, your public website must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA. If you have one or more employees, you must provide information in accessible formats on request, so say how to ask. Ontario’s page on how to make websites accessible sets out the standard.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the linked sources, or ask a lawyer, for your own situation.

GTA practice notes

Choose your launch window. Avoid publishing a new home page in the middle of your busiest weeks, when you have no time to fix problems and every inquiry matters. For many wedding vendors in the GTA, November and early December are a sensible window, so the new page is settled before engagement season and the winter wedding shows. Corporate vendors may prefer late spring, ahead of the late-summer holiday party bookings.

Read results against the season. GTA event demand rises and falls through the year. A home page launched in January may look like a triumph simply because January brings a wave of newly engaged couples, and one launched in July may look like a failure for the opposite reason. Compare each month with the same month last year wherever you can.

Keep the page in step with your other profiles. Visitors often arrive from your Google Business Profile, a wedding platform or Instagram. When the home page changes, update the description, service area and prices on those profiles the same week, so a client never meets two versions of your business. If you list on The Knot, WeddingWire or Zola, check that the starting price there matches the one on your new home page, because a mismatch is the first thing a comparing couple notices.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 15 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)