Your homepage headline has one job.

Most people who land on your homepage did not come for your homepage. They came from a Google result, an Instagram bio, a forwarded link, a visiting card. They arrive with one question and ask it before they scroll: is this the thing I was looking for? The headline answers yes or no. Everything else on the page is read only by the people who got a yes.

The three-second test

Show your homepage to someone outside your industry for three seconds, then close the laptop. Ask them two things: what does this company do, and who is it for? If they cannot answer both, the headline is not doing its job, however good it sounded in the meeting where it was approved.

What it usually says instead

• The mission statement. “Empowering businesses to reach their full potential.” True of every company that has ever existed, including the chai stall outside, which empowers several businesses before ten each morning.
• The pun. Funny to the person who thought of it, a riddle to the person with three seconds. A pun can work as the second line, once the reader knows what it is a pun about.
• The list. “Design | Development | Marketing | Consulting.” A menu with no restaurant.
• The welcome. “Welcome to XYZ Pvt. Ltd.” The reader knows. The browser tab told them.
• The superlative. “India's leading provider of…” Nobody believes a company about itself, and the ones that really do lead rarely open by saying so.

What it should say

A good headline is some version of three things: what you do, who it is for, and the one thing that makes you different. You will rarely fit all three in one line. Pick the one the reader needs first and let the subhead carry the rest.

A few examples, invented for this page. A dental clinic: “Dentists who explain before they drill.” A packaging company: “Boxes for food brands, printed in seven days.” A CA practice: “Your books, your GST and your filing, with one firm that picks up the phone.” None of them is beautiful. All of them would survive the three-second test.

A headline that could sit on a competitor's homepage without anybody noticing is not a headline. It is a placeholder that went live.

Specific beats clever, nearly every time

Clever asks the reader to do work. Specific does the work for them. “We make brands unforgettable” asks you to believe something. “Websites for clinics, live in four weeks” asks you to check something, and checking is much easier than believing.

Clever has its place. It earns it in the ad, the second line, the Instagram caption, once the reader already knows who you are. On a homepage, a stranger has no context for your wit yet, so the wit just looks like fog.

Write twenty, keep one

Nobody writes a good headline first time. Write twenty in ten minutes, badly. Cross out every one a competitor could also use. Cross out every one that needs the logo beside it to make sense. Read the survivors aloud to someone who does not work with you, and keep the one they can repeat back correctly.

Then write the subhead, which is where the other two parts go. If the headline answers “am I in the right place?”, the subhead answers “why should I stay?” One sentence, two at most, and a button that says what happens when you press it.

Then make the page agree with it

A homepage that says “for clinics” and then shows a stock photo of a glass office tower is arguing with itself. The headline makes a promise, and every section underneath either keeps it or quietly breaks it. The thumb test from the About page piece works here too: cover your logo. If the headline could belong to anyone, it does.

And if the right line will not come at all, the problem is rarely the writing. It is the third question in our brief: what is true about you that nobody else can say? Answer that honestly and the headline mostly writes itself.