Research on web usability shows that you only have a few seconds to catch attention of your website visitors. One of most important ways to do this is through your opening headline.

Your headline’s main purpose is to attract attention and generate enough interest so that your visitors keep reading. It’s a first step in a process where your goal is to eventually convince them to take action on your offer.

Here are a few tips for creating powerful headlines

Let your readers know that your site is for them. People want to know immediately when they arrive at your site if they are going to get what they are looking for. Your headline should give someone indication that they are in right place.

Make sure your headline focuses very specifically on core problem of your target market or key benefit that you are offering.

If this is your case, you may want to consider one of these e-zine alternatives. These can still help you achieve your goal of establishing credibility, staying in touch with your prospects, and capturing your Web site visitors.

For first two alternatives, you'll need an e-mail autoresponder. This is like a fax-on-demand system that sends out e-mails automatically when others request them. (I recommend QueenCart.com, which has a FREE 30-day trial.)

The great thing about autoresponders is that you can set timing of a series ahead of time. For example, you can schedule message 1 to go out immediately once a person signs up for list. Message 2 could follow two weeks later. Message 3 would follow two weeks after that. Get idea?

ALTERNATIVE 1: THE "EVERGREEN" NEWSLETTER

If you don't foresee yourself writing fresh new content every week or month that you publish, why not make your newsletter "evergreen?"

This means that you write all your content ahead of time, and none of it can be time-sensitive. That is, it should be just as relevant today as it would be a year from now.

Evergreen e-zines are brilliant and easy to do. Here's how it works: Suppose you want to publish a short tip every week. That means you'd need 52 tips for a year's worth of content. Once you had these written, you'd just set them up on your autoresponder and tell it when you want them sent out. (For this example, it would be day 1, day 7, day 14, etc. -- each reader would get a message every week.)

It's important to realize that when you use a sequential autoresponder, these are sent as a SERIES. That means everyone who signs up goes through series in order, no matter when they sign up. For example, let's say you publish a weekly tip like in example above. If I sign up today, I start with tip #1. And in 10 weeks, I'll be on tip #10. But if Suzy Q signs up 10 weeks from today, she starts with tip #1 just like I did. Get it?