Great Website Taglines, Headers, and Captions Spark Digital Conversions
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Digital Conversions: Great Website Taglines, Headers, & Captions

Websites exist to support your brand and drive engagement from visitors. Great websites create action and movement from users towards interaction with your company. Whether it is branding, recruiting employees, getting leads, or online sales, websites that move people to action are valuable marketing assets.

A critical part of website success is often overlooked. It is the content used to draw people in and get the engagement marketers to desire to drive conversions. 

This key content consists of website taglines, headers, and captions.

They are the most important content catalysts of action and engagement on your web pages.

Let’s review why this is true and a few tips to make your website taglines, content headers, and photo and image captions effective at getting engagement from users.

We will start with the homepage tagline.

Website Homepage Taglines are Your First Brand Impression

This first tip is very important.

The homepage tagline on your website is the most important marketing copy for your company.
Illustration of a billboard: Website Homepage Taglines are Your First Brand Impression
    Captions for Images and Graphics Clarify Your Message

The homepage tagline is the key content you place in your banner image or at the top of your website pages.

This tagline will be seen by the vast majority of website visitors, many of who are experiencing your company for the first time. These users are your prospective customers and how they engage with your homepage tagline can move them forward, in just a few seconds to explore more content, or distract and confuse them.

Many websites have no tagline in the main banner or use interchangeable taglines like “experience the difference” or variations of “we are great” or have “excellent service.”

This critical content needs more attention!

The homepage tagline should be static content, not scrolling or moving. Anyone who reads this tagline must understand what your company does and how you add value.

This tagline must be very clear and direct and highlight how you are better and or different from other options available to the online researcher.

Click here to see examples of bad website taglines and good taglines.

The homepage tagline is not a slogan. Slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It” are meant to build emotion for your brand and are not homepage website taglines.

Content Headers Get People to Read

Content headers are brief titles placed above blocks of text or bullet points on a web page. They introduce the reader to what comes next and provide an overview of what the block of text is about.

Because people scan website content, they will often read these headers before deciding if they want to read more or skip the text below the header. I have used content headers in this blog post to draw attention to the content. We do this on all our blogs and articles found on our website.

Content headers are so valuable Google has designated them as key SEO content for your pages and uses them to rank your website in search results.

Captions for Images and Graphics Clarify Your Message

Captions are key descriptors for photography, images, graphics, and videos. If you don’t use captions with images, then people will make up their interpretation of what the image is communicating and most likely get it wrong. Avoid having people create their caption for your image or graphic! Take control of the message and avoid a likely misinterpretation of the reason for your photo.

Image captions help bring a focus to your content and provide a purpose for placing an image on a web page.

Captions on real photography, rather than stock photos, are much more powerful and drive user engagement with your website. Hire a photographer to get professional photos that tell the story of your company.

Make sure every photo or image has a caption.

Summary

Take the time to write excellent website taglines, headers, and captions to engage the website user as they scan your content looking for a solution to a problem or personal gain in their lives. This content makes it easier for people to make contact with your company.

Also, follow the ten-out-of-ten rule. Ten people coming to your website must understand what your company does and how they can get value from becoming a customer or referring to your company. Clear and direct taglines, headers, and captions will do just that and help get you found in Google to boot.

Thomas Young

Thomas Young is the CEO and Founder of Intuitive Websites. He is a consultant, award winning Vistage speaker and author of “Winning the Website War” and “Sales and Marketing Alignment.” Tom has helped thousands of companies succeed online and has over 25 years digital marketing experience.