Your homepage has about five seconds to communicate what your company does before someone clicks away. That is not much time, and most companies waste it on vague language that could apply to anyone.
The words you use to describe your product (often called your "value proposition") are probably the single most important thing on your website. Get them wrong and nothing else matters.
The five-second test
Here is a simple way to check if your homepage works: show it to someone who knows nothing about your company for five seconds, then hide it. Ask them three questions:
- What does this company do?
- Who is it for?
- Why would someone use it instead of alternatives?
If they cannot answer all three clearly, your homepage is not working. It does not matter how beautiful the design is or how clever the copy sounds to you.
Most startups fail this test. Their homepages say things like "The Platform for Modern Teams" or "Transform Your Workflow" which could mean literally anything.
What a good value proposition looks like
A good value proposition has three parts: what outcome you deliver, who you deliver it to, and what makes you different from alternatives.
You do not need to cram all of this into one sentence, but visitors should understand all three within a few seconds of landing on your page.
Here are some examples of clear value propositions:
"See which companies visit your website even if they never fill out a form. For B2B sales teams who want to know who is checking them out."
This tells you the outcome (see which companies visit), the audience (B2B sales teams), and implies the differentiator (works without forms, which most analytics do not do).
"Project management that engineers actually want to use. Fast keyboard shortcuts, markdown everywhere, and integrates with GitHub."
This tells you it is project management, it is for engineers specifically, and it emphasizes speed and developer-friendly features.
Common problems with value propositions
Using buzzwords and jargon is the most common mistake. Words like "platform," "solution," "leverage," "transform," and "empower" are so overused that they have lost all meaning. When you read "an AI-powered solution that leverages data to transform your workflow," you have learned nothing.
Being too broad is another frequent problem. "We help businesses grow" could describe any company on earth. Being specific about who you help and how you help them might seem like you are excluding potential customers, but specificity is what makes people pay attention.
Leading with features instead of outcomes is also common. People do not care that your product has "advanced analytics dashboards" unless you explain what those dashboards help them accomplish. The feature is not the point. The result is the point.
How to write a better value proposition
Start by answering these questions honestly:
What specific problem do you solve? Not the vague version, the specific version. "Helps teams communicate" is vague. "Shows remote teams what everyone is working on without needing status meetings" is specific.
For which specific type of customer? Who gets the most value from your product? What do they have in common? What situation are they in when they need you?
What is different about how you solve it? Why would someone choose you over doing nothing, using a competitor, or using a spreadsheet?
Once you have answers to these questions, write your homepage headline as: "[Specific outcome] for [specific audience]."
Then write a subheadline that expands on this and hints at your differentiator.
Test your value proposition
After you rewrite your homepage, run the five-second test again with different people. You need fresh eyes each time since people who have seen it before will remember what it said.
Keep iterating until strangers can accurately describe what you do after just a few seconds. This might take several attempts, and that is fine. The goal is clarity, and clarity is hard.