Improving Your Homepage Design

Having a well designed homepage is essential for every website. Not only is the homepage one of the most visited pages of a website, but it is also where your visitors make key decisions about your business. Your homepage needs to explain to your website visitors who you are, what you do and why you are better than your competition.

Does your homepage design present a positive first impression or does it need some improvements? Does it introduce your business sufficiently and encourage visitors to move through your website? We take a look at the benefits of having a well designed homepage, along with key elements a homepage needs.

Benefits of Improving Your Homepage Design

Spending the time to improve the design of your homepage can bring multiple benefits for your business, including:

  • Creates a positive first impression - not only will visitors want to stay longer on your website, they are more likely to return if they have a good feeling about your business. 
  • Brand identification - a well branded homepage will instantly inform visitors that they have arrived at your business' website. Not only does this build awareness of your brand, but also helps to improve loyalty and showcase professionalism too.
  • Begins conversion journey - upon arriving on a well designed homepage, visitors will clearly identify what their next action should be. The customer conversion journey involves your homepage specifically telling the visitor what to do next. 
  • Site sharing - a website which impresses and meets the needs of a visitor is more likely to be shared with others, including through social media. Make it easy for visitors to share your website by having social media sharing widgets available (available with all websites built upon our platform).

From here, it's on to making the design improvements yourself, or using the web design services of one of our recommended web designers. 

Key Elements Your Homepage Design Needs

When designing a home page, there are several key elements you need consider using, including:

Headings

A great top heading will tell a website visitor exactly what your business has to offer. It will be clear and simple and optimised for SEO with an H1 heading tag. Further headings on the homepage need to be an H2 heading tag, which tells search engines that they are less important than the first heading. Research has shown that 80% of visitors to a homepage will read the heading, but only 20% will carry on moving down the page or through the website. Having a well crafted homepage heading will decrease your homepage bounce rate and increase visit lengths and page views.

Navigation

Homepage navigation is not just referring to your menu, but also establishing a clear pathway for visitors to move to in their journey throughout your website. Navigation that is quickly identified and easy to use will encourage visitors to navigate to other areas within your website.

Calls to Action

A call to action tells a website visitor exactly what they should do next. It clearly directs the visitor to perform a highly specific action required to achieve a goal set by the business owner. This could be to sign up to a newsletter subscription list, visit a specific page, leave a blog comment or buy from the website's online shop. A call to action can be in the form of a graphic, hyperlinked text or a button.

Social Proof

Social proof refers to reviews, comments and testimonials from people who have used your services or products, or interacted in some way with your business. It can also include case studies, quotes, photos and statistics from social media or your website. 

Branding

The ways in which you brand your business are important when it comes to customer loyalty and brand recognition. Your website is no different. By including your specific colours, fonts, graphics and taglines, you are showing visitors that they have arrived at a website belonging to your business. Remember to also include your logo and any branded banners too.

Hero Section

The hero section of a home page lays out to the visitor the unique benefits you can offer and the reasons why they should choose your business over your competitors. In other words, show why your business is their hero!

Images

Any photos and graphics you place on your home page need to be crisp, clear and 'tell a story' about your business. While original photos are best, there are stock photos available that do look great too. 

Contact Details - make it easy for your customers to contact you by having your contact information.

For help and advice in improving your homepage design, we recommend  using our video tutorials, our comprehensive help tutorials or engaging the services of our recommended web designers.

Tags: web design  

Posted: Friday 16 July 2021