Wednesday’s marketing and promotion tip for authors

The first screen your home page plays a major role in the success of your online marketing. The content and design must engage your visitor’s interest and persuade them to spend more time at your blog or website.

You can’t just assume that visitors will scroll down to learn more! You must give visitors reasons to scroll or to link.

You get only one chance to engage a blog or website visitor! If you fail to engagement your visitor’s interest in the opening screen of your home page, you’ve lost them forever.

How to preview your website from a new visitor’s perspective

Google makes it easy to analyze the sales power of your home page, permitting you to view your home page from the perspective of a visitor who has just arrived for the first time and hasn’t clicked a link or scrolled down.

As described in a Mashable feature, How Much of Your Website Do Your Viewers See? Google’s Got a Tool to Tell You, the Google Browser Size application lets you view your website from the perspective of visitors with different monitor sizes and resolution settings.

Just visit http://browsersize.googlelabs.com and enter your home page URL in the space provided, as shown above.

Your home page will be overlaid against a chart showing your home page text and graphics as viewed with different monitor settings, (see Published & Profitable sample at top of this post).

Notice the numbers along the top and left-hand margins; these indicate the percentage of website visitors who will be able to see that much of the screen.

Prepare to be surprised

You may be dismayed to find that the display of the opening screen of your home page, as it will be viewed by others, doesn’t provide enough information to compel a first-time visitors to scroll down or to select a navigation link.

This may not be the best news you’ve ever received, but it certainly provides the information you need for a meaningful website review and makeover. What did you find out when you viewed the top of your website’s home page in the Google Browser Size application? Were you pleasant surprised? Are you going to make changes? Share your experiences and questions as comments, below. Special thanks to Merrill Clark, SEO Copywriter, for sharing the Mashable Google Browser Size feature with me!