The question every hero answers
Whether it means to or not, a hero answers “is this for me?”. If it answers slowly, or answers a different question, the visitor does not argue, they leave, and nothing in your analytics records the sentence that lost them.
The most common failure is writing for the company instead of the visitor. “We build innovative digital solutions” answers who we are. Nobody arrived wondering who you are.
The second most common is decorating the answer until it is hard to find. A hero can be loud (ours is) as long as the loudness points at the message rather than competing with it.
Three things belong above the fold: what this is, who it is for, and one thing to do about it. Everything else is scrolling, and scrolling is fine.
Write at the objection, not around it
Umbrella lends to Canadian small businesses, in a category where the visitor has usually been burnt before. Every competitor promises fast money and hides the terms, so the visitor arrives pre-loaded with a specific disbelief.
The headline is “Funding that actually fits your business”. The word doing the work is “actually”, it names the scepticism out loud instead of talking past it, which is the only way to get a hearing from someone who has already decided you are like the others.
Underneath, the paragraph answers it in plain terms: how much, how fast, and what approval is based on. The objection and its answer sit in the same glance.
What to cut
The second call to action. If there are two buttons of equal weight, you have asked the visitor to make a decision before you have earned one. Pick the primary and demote the other.
The carousel. Nobody waits for slide three, and slide one gets weaker because it now has to share.
The eyebrow that says nothing. “Welcome to our website” and “Digital agency” are both a line of vertical space spent on information the visitor already has.
The stock photograph of people who do not work at your company. It reads instantly and it reads as filler, which makes every real claim beside it slightly less believable.