“Welcome to this book. Below you will see a list of the pages in this book, called The Contents. On other pages you will find the start of the story, the middle and – finally – the end, which is particularly exciting. Turn the page using your ‘hands’ to read more.”
Welcome text like this is common on the web, and just as stupid. For some reason, almost every small organisation has textual fluff like this throughout their site.
Why is this such a bad thing? On the web, viewers are notoriously fickle and inattentive beasts. Their attention is at a premium, and you need to fight hard to retain it. The most effective way to do this is to convey more useful information in less space.
Welcome text often creates the warm satisfying glow inside the writer that they’ve coherently explained the mysteries of their site. What they should be doing instead is making their website self evident. It should be obvious how you site works, who you are and what you do. If you need 3 sentences to explain this, your visitor has already left.
Welcome text often exists because someone assumes they have to create content for every page. You don’t. Plenty of pages work just super without any content at all: they act as menus to other pages. You should never be creating text for its own sake.
Most websites need to explain what they are twice: instantly, and on a descriptive About Us page. The instant identity can be any combination of:
- Self-evident name (“So-Awesome Back Massages Inc.”)
- Tagline (“the best freakin’ back massages, baby”)
- Navigation options (“Swedish massage, Hot stone massage …”)
- Imagery (photos of back massages)
Note that text is useless here, except for the short phrase that forms your name or tagline. The About Us page can contain as much text as you like, as it exists for a different audience: people who want to know about you. Most people don’t care, and for them, the instant identity you convey with your site serves their purpose: they’ve learnt roughly what you do, and whether you are relevant to them.
Avoid explaining the obvious. Saying “please visit with us and come back often for updates” is equivalent to asking a stranger to “please find me attractive”, and about as effective. Similarly asking a user to “explore this site”, “click on the menu options” or “fill in the form below” is as redundant as instructing them to breathe.
For further evidence that removing welcome text is the way-of-the-righteous, consider any successful website, like Mint, Rightmove or About. These sites convey what they do instantly, clearly, and all without a rambling monologue at the top.
So remember, there’s no need to welcome anyone to your site. You just need to make the site welcoming.
