why fuss over your homepage

Hey, you know how I bark up the “clear homepages” tree all the time?

And when doing another arrows-pointing-at-stuff post recently, I stopped myself from being overly critical:

"Don't nitpick, the homepage is just a PART of the buyer journey!"

True.

In addition to the homepage, people will want to see your:

• pricing

• feature pages

• case studies

• competitor pages

• blog articles (tbh, "want to" may not be the correct verbiage here)

• docs (if your product has a big implementation footprint)

• integrations (situational, but sometimes crucial)

And this is just ON YOUR WEBSITE. Don't forget everything that people are exposed to outside of it:

• G2/Capterra/etc. profiles

• company socials

• founder and employee socials

• podcasts, YouTube

• peer conversations

• paid ads

• sponsorships

• launches

All of the above can happen in ANY order, multiple times over, both before and during the buying process.

The buyer journey is a hot mess, and your homepage is just a piece of the puzzle.

So why stress over it so much?

I am biased—I do B2B SaaS homepages for a living—but even though all steps of the journey are equal, some are more equal than others.

The homepage is the most-visited page on most websites for a reason.

Want to look at pricing? Some will google "[product name] pricing" but most will just go to the homepage and find the link to the pricing page in the navbar.

Landed on the blog and want to see what the company's about? The navbar logo is their go-to place.

Podcast mention? Either a direct visit or a branded search that's landing on the homepage.

The list goes on.

No other step in the buyer journey has this amount of repeat visits — both purposeful or "just passing through" ones.

And how well-articulated your homepage messaging is directly affects how well your marketing works as a whole.

No matter how good the marketing campaign is, vague pitch deck language on the homepage will take people out of the rest of the experience.

You ever bit on a bone in the middle of a fancy meal? Imagine that, but multiple times throughout the dinner.

The same goes for consistency — imagine ordering steak from the menu, getting what looks like soup, and tastes like candy. None of it is bad, but it's definitely not what you expected. This is what it feels like when your marketing assets aren't aligned on what to say.

So yeah — your homepage isn't just a part of the buyer journey, it's THE part.

The image below is the homepage hero from SuperOffice, which has some parts nailed—category, capabilities, qualifying copy—and others somewhat wacky—aspirational language, vague-ish CTAs.

If I had to guess, their marketing is largely partnerships- and sales-based — the moment their ICP is left without handholding, most are as good as stranded alone on a beach.

Which isn't a problem if you're cool with relying on handholding anyway.

But are you?