Learn The Perfect Homepage Structure For Your Website
About this Squarespace video tutorial
To help clients overcome the roadblock of staring at a blank page and not knowing what to write, I'm going to show you the five questions my clients need to answer in order to get great, SEO-optimized website copy for their homepage. This is the website structure I and my clients rely on, and with this and next week's video, you'll know exactly how to get this first step of the website process finished.
Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
1:41 - Starter Questions
5:03 - Building Website Copy
9:22 - Seeing The Template In Action
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How To Get The Perfect Homepage Structure For Your Website
As a certified Squarespace designer, I’ve built over 250 Squarespace websites with Designing The Row’s services. With this experience, I’ve learned what sets a good website homepage apart from a great one, and boiled all of that information into an easy to understand template that we’re going to be discussing throughout this week and next week’s videos. I’ll show you how I’m helping clients get great starter copy with only five simple questions and what that copy looks like when it’s put into a Squarespace website.
What’s The Goal Of This?
With this copy structure, we want the site to be both readable by search engines and also convert readers who do show up to your website. Having one of these two is nothing without the other, but that pressure can be a lot for business owners who may not know how to best sell their business in a web-ready way. I’ve seen so many clients be stuck staring at the blank page, not knowing what they’re supposed to write down or why, so my goal is to keep that decision paralysis from affecting you.
Starter Questions
I actually only need answers to five simple questions to get the copy process started:
What’s your brand/business name
What’s your main keyword phrase (what would your ideal client/viewer search on Google to find you)
For example: A main keyword phrase for Designing The Row could be ‘Squarespace web designer’
What’s your primary goal for this website
Examples: grow your email list, sell a product, promote a service
Do you have a free offer or email sign up incentive?
It’s very important too have a free offer or email sign up incentive so you can continue the conversation with the client even if they’re not going to buy the product/service in the moment, so I do really recommend thinking of one if you don’t have one already in use.
Tell us about the company
Examples of what you can include: what you do, who you serve, how you got started, where you’re based, what makes your approach or service different, one transformation/result you’re particularly proud of
You don’t have to answer all of them, but if any are specific to you, it should absolutely go in the answer, because what we’re looking for is what to highlight in the messaging for your business.
Building The Copy
Once you’ve done the hardest part of this process (no, seriously), go to DesigningTheRow.com/free and put in your name and email to get access to a custom GPT that I’ve built that uses all of the information in my head about creating websites that convert to build your copy in a structured way.
All you need to do is write ‘Here is some info about my business, can you help me write a homepage for my website’ with the answers you’ve offered. Give it a few seconds to generate, and you have this first step of copy complete! Part of the helpful thing with this process is the resulting copy lets you know how to format it so your website can put its best foot forward, especially if you want to use this copy for a website you’re designing on your own.
As a warning, sometimes things will be made up such as testimonials or adding in a CTA you don’t want to put on your site. It’s important to scan through the generated copy and pick and choose which parts you actually want to use and not just copy it all. This is a great launching pad, but it’s not the entire process. It’s just the hard parts taken care of.
Seeing The Template In Action
We’ll discuss this further next week, but I have a wireframe that shows where the specific chunks of copy that the custom GPT has built are meant to go. This can help you format and decide where to place headers, testimonials, FAQs, or custom feeds, and also let you know if you need to source any additional work or assets for those sections.
Curious about what the process of building a website with Designing The Row is even after copy creation? Then you can check out my video on the four-week long process to get a website live that I put together recently, and I’ll see you next week to finish up talking about perfect website homepage structure.
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