How to Build the Perfect Home Page

How to Build the Perfect Home Page

Are you wondering how you can generate more leads and increase conversions from your website? Are you considering a website redesign? If yes, it is always an excellent idea to begin with your website’s home page, especially home page design. Want to know why?

The home page is perhaps one of the most crucial pages on your brand’s website. Your home page usually receives the most traffic and is probably the most visited webpage out of all of them from an analytics standpoint. Also, it will likely be the first interaction your visitors or prospects will have with your business online.

It is no secret that the best home pages are often the result of plenty of research, thought, and great planning. Essentially, the home page is your digital business card or a digital welcome sign that greets visitors when they go to your website, and you can spruce it up with some amazing home page design ideas.

While having a beautiful and visually appealing design is important, it is not enough. If you would like to keep visitors glued to your site and increase conversions, you need a great home page that offers an uninterrupted and seamless environment for them.

Therefore, a properly and carefully designed home page often marks the difference between a mediocre webpage and a page that has the ability to potentially acquire new customers for your brand and forge new relationships in the future.

As developing that perfect home page for your site is often a tall order, we will make it as simple as possible for you.

How to Design a Great Home page:

Tell Your Visitors What You Offer

When it comes to home page design, we often concentrate on graphics over text; however, both are equally vital when planning the header on your website home page. Keep in mind that your home page is a central hub; it is the place where visitors can learn what your brand and business are all about and also identify links to significant features and elements on your site.

So, you should establish your identity and tell your visitors how your brand can help them or solve their problems. You should use cohesive text and visuals in order to inform your visitors right away who you are as well as what you offer. Don’t keep them guessing!

Also, your visitors must be able to tell what distinguishes you from your competitors. Once you know how to write an About Us page, you’re able to pull pieces of that page to feature on your Home Page.

Keep Your Design Clean and Consistent

You should keep your home page’s layout clutter-free and clean. You may have noticed that the most successful home pages all have some common features that users have come to expect. Your business logo, for example, should be located on the upper left-hand corner of your home page and other webpages.

Also, navigation is important when designing your home page and website. Your navigation menu is essentially the map which displays the key places your users can visit. Note that there is nothing worse than a website that has a confusing or disorganized navigation interface. It is essential to ensure that your visitors can quickly and easily find what they are looking for when enhancing your website’s navigation.

If you present your visitors with an excessive amount of images and information, they will feel overwhelmed and confused. On the other hand, you’ll come off more professional and organized if your website’s content is tidy and well-thought-out.

Choose the Best Images

There is no denying that most individuals are visual. You should use an image that can clearly indicate what you offer. Note that cheesy stock photos, non-HD images, and clip art will not cut it anymore.

Avoid stock photos on your home page as you will not be able to form a connection with your visitors.  Instead, have original and high-quality images to make sure your home page does not look like every other competitor’s. You will be better served getting your own photographs to use on your home page. You can hire a professional photographer in order to get the best images for your home page. Most people have an attention span of only eight seconds, so it is essential to create the best first impression that quickly and easily gets the main points across.

You should do this with short, powerful, and engaging sections of applicable photos/icons and content that is sectioned off by concise and clear headers. And keep your most important images above the fold where your viewers’ eyes are more likely to see them. Moreover, 39 percent of visitors will not engage with a website if the photos or images will not load; so it also important to optimize all your images.

Include a Prominent CTA (Call to Action)

Once a visitor lands on your website, does he or she know what to do next? This is why it is important that your call to action is prominent and not buried down your home page. You should place the CTA soon after the headline, ideally standing out from everything around it to make the most impact. Otherwise, your visitors will not know what page to view or action to take if you fail to offer them with some direction and guidance. It is worth noting that a compelling and noticeable call to action can be a conversion powerhouse for your business.

This is the reason the most successful brands use optimized CTAs on their home age (usually in either the header or footer portion) to great effect in considerably increasing their user base. You should leverage home page design ideas that make the most of this concept.

At times, people get cute and try hard to make fancy buttons. While there is nothing wrong with having fancy buttons on your home page, make sure they stand out clearly and are also prominently featured on your home page.

In other words, if the main purpose is to make visitors take action and click, then you will have to make your CTA tempting.

Add Social Media Icons

As there are so many social media websites out there, such as Facebook and Instagram, it is difficult to choose which ones you should have on your home page. Here’s a simple tip: choose the social media sites that most people, especially your target audience, are familiar with and that you’re often active on. You may miss out on plenty of social media traffic that is generated from individuals already reading your blog if your website and home page currently lack social share buttons. The great thing about social media buttons is that they are a non-pushy tool that encourages more social sharing from your users.

Optimize your Site for all Devices

Given the increase in mobile searches, your site must be optimized for devices, such as smartphones and tablets. One of the most annoying and frustrating things your site visitors can experience is trying to load a webpage that hasn’t been optimized for the devices they are using. It is a common occurrence for businesses that have failed to optimize their website and home page for mobile devices. Note that analytics from Google reveals that 61 percent of users are not likely to return to a site that they had trouble loading and viewing on their mobile devices.

Also, besides optimization, you have to make sure that your home page looks great on all devices. As the majority of web traffic now comes from various mobile devices, it is important to make sure that your home page design looks exactly the way you would like it to be on different mobile screens before you sign-off on the new design layout. So, you should check your home page on multiple devices for both mobile and tablet friendliness.

Final Thoughts

The ultimate purpose of your home page is to educate your potential users and boosting conversion rates. As your home page is often the entry portal to the rest of your business, make sure that you use it to leave a positive and lasting impression when people visit it. Now that you understand what to include on your home page, check out our website content checklist for more insights on how to make the most of your website.

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