First things first. This test and approach applies to static home pages for sites that sell stuff — products, services and subscriptions etc. It does not apply to publishers, blogs or websites which have a blog on the home page.
With that out of the way, let’s begin.
When working with clients on their home pages I will often suggest the following:
“Let’s take a screenshot of the first screen of your homepage, erase all the body text, and then see how much of your core message survives.”
To put it another way, I want to see how much of the site’s message survives if people read only the headlines, subheads and text links.
What’s the point?
Because that’s how first-time visitors actually behave when they arrive on your homepage for the first time.