Your coaching homepage should center clients: Lessons from a TED Talk
Key takeaways:
When your centre yourself, rather than your client, you create distance, rather than connection.
Using the language your clients naturally use to describe their challenge makes them feel seen and understood
Using H1 and H2 styling tags for your heading and subheading helps humans and search engines understand your work.
Getting an outside perspective on your homepage header section helps to know if it clearly explains what you do.
This week I took ten minutes out of my day to watch Rebecca Okamoto’s TED talk: How to Introduce Yourself – and Get Hired.
In it she shared how she interviewed for a perfect-fit job. When the interviewer said, “tell me about yourself,” she proudly explained all the things she could do. When she’d finished, the interviewer said, “Uh, instead of talking about yourself, it would have been more effective if you’d explained what you could do for me”. And that was it – the interview was over.
And it struck me that this is a mistake I see time and again when reviewing coaching websites. I often see a lot of copy about the practitioner and the methods they use, and not nearly enough about the person they want to help, the challenge they face, and the outcome they’re looking for.
This is key information – and your website needs to lead with it.
The top of your website’s homepage gets a lot of attention
The top of your homepage – aka ‘above the fold’ (a hangover from the days of a folded newspaper) is the part of a website that gets the most attention from a new visitor. It’s your website’s prime real estate.
As a coach or therapist this is not where you want to talk about your qualifications and experience. That comes later. This part of the website is where you make a connection – you want a right-fit client to read this section and see themselves reflected back in your words.
In a world of ever-diminishing attention spans and increasing competition, you have mere seconds to clearly communicate the challenge you help people with.
I’m not talking loud and shouty headings or high-pressure calls to action – far from it. If you help people struggling with anxiety, stress, or the effects of trauma, the top of your homepage needs to communicate safety and compassion.
But whatever your potential clients are dealing with, your homepage heading and subheading, when done well, can help them feel less alone in their struggles.
If someone lands on a homepage centred around you, your credentials and your achievements, you’ll likely lose them. Not because this information isn’t important – it is. But because a connection between you and them hasn’t yet been made.
They don’t yet know if you can help, therefore they don’t yet care about your experience.
What you need to put at the top of your homepage
Clearly communicating the problem you solve at the top of your homepage is a non-negotiable. Alongside that core problem, this section can also communicate:
Who you help, like busy parents, people changing careers, people experiencing stress
An outcome they can expect, like better sleep, less stress, better working relationships
How the help is delivered, like one-to-one sessions, a six-week programme
This information is usually delivered through a main heading and a subheading. The job of these two pieces of text is to quickly let visitors know if they’re in the right place.
Clearly communicating the problem you solve is a must for human understanding, but it’s also necessary for search engine and AI understanding too. (I wrote more about this in a blog post about how I abandoned a beautiful website because it confused me.)
Understanding text styling tags
Whenever you add text to your website (using Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, etc), you can choose the style you want the text to be in, like H1, H2, and Paragraph text. It’s important to use these correctly because search engines and AI use styling tags to understand what your services are about.
Main heading – H1
Every page on your website needs an H1 heading styling tag. It’s the largest text at the top of the page and the first thing a visitor reads. It needs to capture someone’s attention, and speak directly to the problem you help solve.
Subheading – H2
Underneath your H1, you'll have a subheading. This is usually an H2 heading styling tag and can be used to add details.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule for what to put in which heading type. Some recommend using the H1 as a 'hook' and the H2 for the practical details. Others use the H1 to state exactly who they help, and the H2 to state the outcome and how it’s achieved, for example through one-to-one sessions.
Examples of great homepage messaging
Here’s a great example of an above the fold heading and subheading from business coach Greg Faxon:
H1: The best clients come from the simplest marketing.
H2: I help established coaches and service providers simplify their positioning, offers, and marketing strategy so they can generate a predictable flow of high-end clients (without relying on social media).
Greg coaches other busy coaches. His H1 quickly captures attention by speaking to a major pain point: busy coaches don’t want to spend endless hours marketing.
His H2 is where he fills in the details – it clearly communicates who he helps (established coaches and service providers), what he helps them do (simplify their positioning, offers, and marketing strategy), and what outcome they can expect (a predictable flow of high-end clients). It then reiterates this can be done without spending hours on social media marketing.
Here’s a couple of other examples:
H1: Bedtime – without the battle.
H2: A six-week programme for parents who want calm, stress-free bedtimes so everyone gets a good night’s sleep.
H1: Calm the 3am anxiety that comes with unexpected career change
H2: Coaching for professionals going through redundancy or a restructure – gain clarity before your next CV lands
Why writing your own homepage copy is hard
Copywriters can spend hours trying to craft the perfect homepage heading. Getting it right matters, and it’s uniquely difficult for coaches and therapists because you deal with feelings, experiences and transformations – things that are hard to put into words. Plus, being inside your own work means it’s almost impossible to have an outside perspective.
If you’re struggling to write your own homepage heading section, a one hour, one-to-one Website Messaging and Clarity Session can help nail down the problem you solve and how to speak about it.
But if you want to craft it yourself, here’s a couple of ways to approach it:
Think about the language your clients use: look at testimonials, emails clients have sent or things they’ve said to you. What words and phrases did they use? Has more than one client said the same thing? What have they said about the difference working with you has made?
Do some online and in-person research: If you’re early on in your business and don’t have testimonials, look at online spaces like Reddit where people talk naturally and anonymously about their challenges. Are you seeing repeated themes, words and phrases? Could you talk to people who have the problem you help solve? What language do they use?
Record this language in a document and add to it when new words or phrases come up that you know will resonate with ideal clients.
Your above the fold doesn’t have to be perfect
You can easily spend hours creating a homepage heading and subheading you’re happy with.
It’s important, but don’t stress. Get something you’re happy with and put it on your website. Then a month or two later go back and review it. Does it still resonate? Could a tweak make it even more impactful?
Your business will likely change over time – and so will your homepage heading section. As long as it clearly communicates the problem you help solve, you’re good to go.
Common questions
Should I optimise my homepage heading section for humans or search engines and AI?
Optimising your homepage for humans is optimising for search engines and AI. When you clearly communicate and structure your heading for human understanding, you also make it highly readable and informative for search crawlers and AI.
Do I need to put an image of myself in the top section of the homepage?
No, you don’t have to have an image of yourself above the fold, but it’s a good option. If you don’t have a picture of you at the top of your homepage, make sure to put one further down the page where you introduce yourself. Seeing your face is a vital trust signal for potential clients.
I struggle to find the right words to say what I do. What should I do?
You’re not alone! Many of us struggle to explain what we do because we’re so close to our own work. Try writing a rough draft and show it to a friend – someone who doesn’t know your work well – and ask them to tell you what they think you do. If they nail it, your copy is working. If not, take another run at it.
Where’s the best place to talk about my qualifications and experience?
Further down your homepage, once a visitor is engaged and knows you understand their problem, is a great place to share a little about your professional background. From there, direct them to your full 'About' page. Don’t make your ‘About’ page sound like a CV – talk about your experience and qualifications as it relates to the work you do.
