How to test your home page messaging with real users

You've tweaked the copy, you've changed the headline 300 times. You've endlessly debated button colors, you've moved sections up, you've moved them down, you've moved them back up again. Yes, these are the things that go into designing or redesigning a home page, but eventually your new home page is ready to go live.

And after all of those little adjustments, there's usually still one big question floating out there. Did you get it right? Now, this might be news to our younger audience, but a lot has changed about the internet and websites. Since the early days, we've seen technology change. Design trends come and go.

Attention spans definitely have shortened, but if there's one thing that really hasn't changed a whole lot. It's the good old home page. It's still your website's home base. It's still usually the most trafficked page on your site, and it is definitely still where people form that first impression usually in just a couple of seconds.

That's pretty much all it takes for someone to decide whether to take that next step and potentially become one day a loyal customer or user. Or to bounce leave and never be seen again. So when you combine those high stakes of the home page with the limited real estate that you get, you have an audience that could be just about anyone that all comes together to make quite the design challenge.

Now, there are endless. Micro decisions that you can and that we do obsess over. But here's the thing, the home page design can take on a life of its own, but the ultimate goal is actually really simple. When your ideal customer lands there for the first time, they should instantly recognize, this is for me and this site, or this product helps me do something that I need or want to do.

So how do you know if that's actually happening? And more importantly, if it's not, how do you fix it?

In this playbook, I'm going to walk you through a simple step-by-step framework along with a ready to use research template to assess and improve your home page, not through guesswork, not through gut reactions, not through endless trial and error, but by hearing it directly from your users.

All right. Now let's check out the template that goes along with this playbook. If you made a copy of the home page testing template, you should be seeing what I'm seeing here.

This is gonna be your starting point. I designed this template specifically for this use case. You've got a home page that you wanna redesign. Maybe you're creating it for the first time. Either way, you want to understand what's resonating, how it's connecting with users, and also get some ideas to improve it.

So if you scroll through this template, you're going to see there's a lot of placeholder content in here. That is all intentional. It's meant to be a starting point and guide you and give you some ways to plug in your own details so you can adapt it to your own home page, your own audience, and your own research goals.

We'll get into the details of the template, but at a high level, it's broken up into two key sections. First, we have this five second test, or in our case, kind of a quick impression test that helps you get those immediate first impressions that people are getting from the home page.

The second section is a design survey. This is where participants are going to spend a little bit more time looking at your home page and dig a little bit deeper. This is gonna give you more detailed feedback about what's working, what's missing, and what changes might help improve it.

So as I walk through the example in this playbook, I'm gonna show you how I took this template and adapted it for my scenario. How I reviewed the results and recruited for it, and how I turned those findings into some actionable next steps.

Now let me show you the scenario that I'm going to be walking through in this video.

For this example, we're gonna imagine a company, a website, web app called Page Turn. Page Turn is an all-in-one platform to help people write, design, format, print, publish, and distribute their own books. So a little background originally, Page Turn kind of built its reputation as a powerful tool for more advanced authors, publishers, people who wanted those professional level controls over formatting, distribution, and publishing. So that advanced aspect of it, that was the core benefit. But in recent years, Page Turn has expanded its focus. They've started appealing to beginners, hobbyists, first time authors, people with little or no experience publishing books, who want to try it for the first time.

So Page Turn has built tools and workflows specifically for this audience. They've updated their home page, their website messaging to reflect that. But the big question still stands, is it working? Does the home page actually make that connection clear, or does it still feel geared towards those more experienced, advanced users?

That is what we're here to find out. So follow along with me step by step. I'm gonna show you how to adapt this template to your own home page goals and show you some of the changes that I make to get this answer for page turn.

Now let's switch over to the actual Page Turn study that I created using that template.

We'll start by walking through how I built it. Then we'll get into recruiting participants, analyzing the results, and determining some next steps. As a reminder, our goal is simple. We're trying to assess how well the home page connects with first time inexperienced authors and find some ways to strengthen that connection.

So let's get into the first main section here. The five second test where I uploaded a screenshot of the page turn home page, and I changed the amount of time that participants see it to 10 seconds.

So it's called a five second test. You can actually set the timing up to 20 seconds. The right amount depends on the complexity of what you're showing. For this home page, I chose 10 seconds. That's enough time for a quick scan, but it's still clearly just going to be a first impression reaction. After the image disappears, the important stuff comes in.

We get some follow-up questions to really see how people perceive the home page and how well they recalled what they were seeing and what stood out to them. So we have our first question here. This is an open-end question. In your own words, describe what Page Turn is and who it's for. This is going to give us some raw, unfiltered perception right after viewing it.

We're gonna see what they took away in their own words before we guide them or ask them any more questions. Now if we go down to the next question, this is select up to three. We're asking participants really what messages seemed most clearly communicated on the home page during those 10 seconds. This is an important question because it forces some prioritization.

Instead of just asking generally what stood out for them, we're asking what stood out the most, what felt most prominent, what message seems to be leading after just 10 seconds of seeing that home page. So together these questions are going to help us understand both what the participants' natural first impression was, and which messages clearly and prominently stood out on the home page.

Scrolling down again, we get to our design survey, so this is where participants are going to see the home page again, but this time it doesn't disappear.

Going down to the next part of our study into the design survey. The participants are gonna see the home page again, but this time it's not gonna disappear. They can scroll and explore it freely. And here we're asking a couple more questions. What on the page would make you feel more confident that Page Turn is a good solution for you as a beginner?

And then we're flipping that in our next question. What, if anything on this page would make you feel less confident? That this is the right product for you to publish your book as an inexperienced first time author. We finally have a question at the end that's also open-ended. What would you add or change to help inexperienced authors feel more confident to get started with Page Turn?

So this section is really helping us move from diagnosis to direction. The quick impression test, the five second test, that's gonna tell us what people notice first, but this design survey is gonna help explain why and what we might do about it. So by the time someone finishes this study, we don't just know whether or not the page and the messaging is landing with them.

We know what's helping, what's getting in the way, and might get some suggestions to strengthen that even further.

Alright, so now that our study is looking good, it's time to get it out there. We're going to recruit some participants, get this study in front of some people and start to see some results roll in. So in Lyssna, you can recruit participants two ways. You can use a link, simple copy and paste, share it with anyone and they're invited to participate in your study. Or you can recruit from the panel, get fast, high quality feedback and get a little bit more granular on who you're targeting and who you wanna get this study in front of. You can use either of these or both of them together, but to get some quick results, I'm going to recruit from the panel, and you'll see once I click that, I have a couple more decisions to make before our survey is officially launched.

First, I'm going to choose the number of participants. I pick 25 for this study. You could ramp that up or down, depending on the complexity of your study, depending on the sample size that you need for it. But I think this is going to be solid for what we're trying to accomplish. You'll also see there are a ton of filters and ways to define your target audience.

I'm keeping this really simple. Just going to recruit participants in the United States, but there are tons of other options that can be helpful if you're trying to get more specific. Now, I also included a screener survey in the build section that is meant to exclude experienced writers or people who have self-published before and other people who are more familiar or experienced with tools like Page Turn.

So even though we're going light on our recruitment strategy here, that screener survey is gonna ensure that we're getting beginners into this study and getting feedback from them, the people who we're trying to cater our messaging to,

It's been about 45 minutes since launching, and we have got some results. 25 participants have given their impressions, feedback, reactions, suggestions on the page turn home page, so let's check 'em out and see what people thought. First, let's go to our five second slash ten second test.

We have our screenshot here, which participants saw for 10 seconds, and then we get into our first follow up questions. In your own words, briefly describe what Page Turn is and who you think it's for. Now, looking at the responses, there are definitely some things to be positive about here. Almost every single participant described it as some variation of a platform for people to write and publish books, so that means the home page is clearly communicating what the product is and what it does. People get the core idea of Page Turn, but there's not a whole lot more beyond that. A couple participants mentioned that it seemed geared towards self-published authors, but no one really specifically mentioned beginners or people who were totally new to writing and publishing a book.

So while this isn't an exact science, these responses tell us something important. People understand what Page Turn does on a first impression, but anything more specific about who it's for isn't really coming through in those 10 seconds. So let's keep going and see if we get some more detailed signals from that next section.

Next up is the message selection question. We listed several key value propositions from the home page, and we asked people which message seemed most clearly communicated, and we can see that a few messages really stood out. We saw 76% of participants said the clearest message was that the platform helps self-publish authors publish, distribute, and sell their books. 72% said the platform offers powerful writing and formatting tools. 44% selected messaging about professional grade formatting and typography tools. We saw some open-ended responses mentioned publishing and selling books, as well as some other things that stood out as key takeaways.

But what's even more interesting is what didn't stand out. Only 32% of participants selected beginner friendly messaging. S o when we combine the insights from these first two questions, were starting to see a pattern. The home page is doing a good job of communicating what Page Turn is and what it does, but the messaging that it's designed for beginners, an important part of our positioning, is getting overshadowed by the more advanced or professional focused messaging.

Now let's take a look at the design survey responses. The first question asks, what, if anything made you feel more confident that Page Turn is a good fit for you and your beginner experience level? Participants mainly highlighted two things most often. One of them was that new to publishing start here section that was a little bit lower on the page and probably missed in the ten second test, and almost a third of participants mentioned the testimonial from Jenna, a first time author who successfully and easily published her first book using Page Turn.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that there are elements on this page that connect with beginners, but they're not that prominent. You kind of have to look and dig a little bit deeper for them. Let's go to the next question. Confidence concerns. What, if anything on this page made you feel less confident that Page Turn would be a good fit for you as a beginner? And here we saw a really clear theme. 84% of respondents cited concerns that the platform felt too advanced or professional for them as a beginner. Some mentioned some language and terminology like professional grade tools. Other people pointed to the long list of kind of more technical features, and a few participants mentioned that the testimonial from a bestselling author was impressive, but didn't exactly give beginner friendly vibes.

So again, we're starting to see a clearer picture here. Elements like the beginner testimonial and the start here guide, those helped build that beginner friendly confidence. But the heavy emphasis on technical features, professional level tools and messaging is still pushing in the opposite direction.

Our final question asked, what would you add or change to make inexperienced authors feel more confident to get started with Page Turn?

So this question is opening the door for new ideas. We've seen that some things on the page are working, but there might be some areas to improve or some ideas, for content or features we could use that we haven't thought of yet. This is where we're gonna find those out.

Looking at the responses, a couple things emerge. One is showing more beginner success stories. People suggested making testimonials from first time authors more prominent. The one from Jenna in the previous section really seemed to resonate, and that's even further emphasized here.

Another idea that came up a few times was reworking the feature list. Several participants suggested kind of separating beginning. Several participants suggested kind of separating beginner friendly features from more advanced tools so the page doesn't feel too overwhelming. And finally, there were also several responses that suggested more explicit beginner messaging. Things like writing your first book and not sure how to begin get started here. Or never published a book before, we'll guide you through it get started. These kinds of suggestions are doubling down on some of the themes we heard in other questions and giving us some new ideas to work with.

So if we take a step back and look at the results overall, we've learned quite a bit. We've evaluated the home page first impression. We've identified which messaging stands out the most. We've uncovered what makes beginners feel confident in Page Turn, what makes them hesitate, and we've even surfaced some new ideas for improving that connection. So instead of endlessly guessing or tweaking the home page, now we have a really solid starting point based directly on the feedback from real users.

So the final question becomes, what do we do with all of this? How do we take these insights and findings and go the distance, turn them into actual improvements to our home page?

Well, there are a lot of different directions that we could go and a lot of potential next steps, but one simple approach would be to update the home page design based on this feedback and run the exact same study again. This time, with the new home page. So for example, we might make beginner testimonials more prominent.

We might adjust the headline to be more beginner focused. We might highlight that quick start guide or new to publishing start here. We could do any or all of these things and create a revamped version based on this feedback. Then we could run the exact same study again and see if the first impression and some of those deeper dive results improved.

Whatever direction we choose. We're now moving forward with design decisions that are based on clear signals, real user feedback, not guesswork or assumptions.

Your home page is where a lot of very important first impressions happen, and they happen very quickly. It's easy to get stuck endlessly tweaking, copy layouts, messaging, trying to get that first impression right, but instead of relying on trial and error, you can simply ask your users what they're actually taking away from your page.

Doing that removes a lot of extra work and helps you focus on a small number of changes that really could dramatically improve how people understand and connect with your product. So if you're designing a home page, if you're redesigning one, if you're constantly tweaking one, trying to get the messaging right, this template is for you.

Grab the template link below, adapt it to your own product and your own home page. Launch the study and see what your audience really takes away from those first impressions. We're working on more research playbooks to help you run fast, practical studies like this one in your day-to-day work. So if you found this helpful, subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

And if you're facing a research or product design challenge right now and wish you had a simple study template to magically solve it, let us know in the comments and we might feature it in an upcoming playbook. Thanks so much and see you in the next one.