Lisa Twining Taylor uploaded a new home page background image to this site a couple of days ago, so I posted a screenshot of it and asked my friends on Facebook to weigh in on it. It received 100% accolades. Some of the folks who spotted it continued past the screenshot and visited the site itself. They, too, gave it 100% thumbs up.
I’ve known for some time that I wanted a background that helped the headline POP in a powerful way. I just wasn’t sure whether the background should be fireworks, an aurora borealis, or an orca leaping out of Puget Sound. I knew I wanted something that indicated action and a transition from dull to dazzling, but it took me a while to settle on something that seemed to fit. This doesn’t mean I won’t swap out the background from time to time, but for now, I’m enjoying the new look. It does what it’s supposed to do–that’s for sure!
The combination of compelling, engaging words and appropriate, powerful images goes a long way toward convincing visitors to a website to stay and play for a while. Without them–and a video here and there, too–visitors quickly tire and fly away unless they’re on a site they absolutely have to be on (their healthcare provider’s site, insurance company’s site, banking site, federal sites, and other “captive audience” sites like these). It’s too bad that “captive audience” sites don’t make their visitors’ experiences more enjoyable, too, but they don’t have to; you’re in thrall to them; you have few other options. Most business owners and entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of being boring; they have to rivet their visitors into place in the first five to eight seconds and never let them go after that until the last word, action line, or what-have-you appears…
Your home page background image needs to give people an unspoken reason to want to investigate further. It can’t just sit there looking pretty. It should tie in somehow to the promise you make in your headline and sub-headings. It has to “show” rather than “tell” what the visitor to your site can expect as a result of engaging with you fully.
So take your time deciding on the background image for your home page. Swap your best ideas out and ask close friends and business networking partners to weigh on on their opinions of your background image. They might even have ideas for it that you never even thought of–ideas that will have you jumping off the ground and fist-bumping the air.
Make choosing your home page background image a team event. Unless you do, you have no idea what can happen!
