9 Tips for crafting a homepage that makes a good first-time impression
You only have eight seconds to impress a potential customer before they leave your site for good. What does this mean? A good first impression is vital to your business’ site, and you only have one chance, and eight seconds, to make it. It is the home page on your website that people encounter with and it can lead to a lasting impression that can affect their decision to return to it.
In the modern day, internet consumers are impatient and want the information they look for in a flash “Say it quick, say it well”. As much as providing necessary information in a nut-shell is important, a great UI/UX is equally important to make your website stand out from the crowd. With that being said, you may be wondering what should or should not appear on your website’s homepage. Below I have outlined what to include and how to include it for a good and lasting impression.
“Designing is as much as cooking a recipe people would love to eat, it need to be cooked with right proportion, with empathy and a creative or pleasing presentation”.
So, what makes a great home page? One that’s easy to use and understand and helps a visitor find the information they are looking for. The easier it is for your customers to use your website, the more likely it is that they’ll take action by converting from visitors to fans or leads and then a customer.
Not enough time to go through the article here is the mock homepage wireframe you can download for the tips.
1) Convey Your Value Proposition using Compelling Headlines
Headlines need to capture the readers’ attention. Be straight to the point and give the reader a quick understanding of exactly what it is that you are offering and whether it is right for what they are looking for. Tell people what you do, why they should choose you, and what you want them to do next. The crisper you can make your headline, the better.
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. - David Ogilvy
A good headline alone is not enough — it needs help. Include a sub-headline to boost clarity, an intro paragraph to explain the service and bullet points to emphasize benefits. The sum of all of them will help you deliver a more effective message. For more great information on headlines, check out Peep Lajas’ post on headlines that work and the inforgrphics by QuickSprout.
2) Lead Visitors to Next Step with appropriate Call-to-Actions
Having an effective call to action is an essential part of any website. Every website should have an objective it wants users to complete whether it is filling a contact form, signup for a newsletter or volunteering their time. A call to action provides focus to your site, a way to measure your sites success and provide direction to your users. Moreover the call to action has a fascinating psychology behind it that includes in-terms of width, color, border size, copy, and cool CSS effects.
How many CTAs is optimal on your home page?
The more buttons you have, the more the visitor has to think about what to click on. For that reason one button is ideal but different visitors might be looking for different things, so that’s where 2 buttons are good as you can give visitors two options. However, having the same CTA between scrolls can help the user without searching for the next step.
3) Use Images that grabs users attention
Images not only add life to a website, they also make it convert better. Using images within your content can be very powerful way of capturing visitors attention and communicating your message. Images have been shown to draw people attention out of the typical “F-Pattern” of scanning page, if not used effectively it can be powerful distraction.
Sometimes Stock photos of people might be the only option, but wherever you can use photos of real people. Images should help visitors understand what you’re saying on the page and also the right photo in the right place can be less effective, it it’s not sized effectively, hence getting the right positioning is the key.
The right images can help guide user’s eyes. If models are used, make them look towards the product image, the logo (brand) or the text. This will increase the product awareness and have the desired effect.
For more information “How to Use Images Successfully — Web Design Usability Guide”.
4) Content Discovery — Persistent and ease of use navigation
When it comes to websites, the navigation acts like a road map to the different areas and information contained within the website. If the navigation is clear, visitors will stay and have a good experience, which ultimately leads to more business for you. Some tactics for effective navigation include a logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, designing clickable buttons, and following the ‘three click rule’.
Imagine a situation where you are unaware of what is happening around you. Very quickly, the “stress” button is switched on and you try to do everything you can to regain control. The same logic can be applied to web navigation and digital experience.
Remember, users can enter your site through any page, logo, ad, name etc. and can feel lost trying to find their way through very long webpages. In most cases, this feeling will trigger stress that will cause them to leave the site. This is exactly the purpose of persistent and ease of use navigation: it needs to be available across all pages providing great visibility towards the current state and discovery of your content without sensing that they’re losing control.
5) Story Telling — user don’t read; they scan
Now that we’ve become skimmers rather than being readers, it is fair to say that pretty much all of the content you produce is up against a tough audience. In just seconds, someone is going to click away if they decide that your website isn’t relevant or interesting to them.
One of the key ways to keep them from clicking away is to connect with them. The more the user spends time, the more it strengthens the relationship you are building between your company/brand and your audience. So it’s important to gets them tuned in and give your content the attention it deserves. Connection can be formed at a couple of levels; either through providing the values or through emotions and these can be achieved through storytelling.
Storytelling is a powerful approach, when done right, compel users to convert more effectively than what any amount of optimization, crazy visual callouts, or awesome interactive elements can do otherwise. Much like how we expect to see a moral at the end of a book, we expect to find a purpose at the end of a site with a storytelling experience.
Have some focal point or even a break point which talk about the features the product holds and what it can add for your business by this way we can grab attention of the Visitors and make them read.
Along with storytelling the content needs to be visually appealing and more importantly in readable format. There are three fundamental principles involved in the use of the visible language as stated by Aaron Marcus.
Organize: provide the user with a clear and consistent conceptual structure.
Economize: do the most with the least amount of cues and visual elements.
Communicate: match the presentation to the capabilities of the user.
Make it easier for your reader to grab critical information using contrasting colours for the text. Everything has to be cohesive and also functional. Apply aesthetics, brand elements and visual affordances to the surface of the design to make the experience visually appealing, help support your message and engage users. Likewise, white space/ negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look. Vibrant colours elicit emotion and should be used sparingly.
6) Show Off your Product Image or a Video
People no longer want to browse a website — they want to experience it. Hence choosing the right images for your website can help with brand positioning and connecting with your target audience.
An image or a video about the product on top of the fold is important to give the visitors a visual representation of your products. If you sell physical products, you should take professional photos of your products and show an image or two of the products. If you sell a SaaS product, you can show a screenshot image. If you have a very complicated product, you may want to use a video to provide a quick demo of how your product works. It is easier to watch a video than read about your product. This captures your visitors’ attention makes them look further into your product.
7) Establish Credibility And Trust
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but it seems you can judge a business by its website. Your website is the online “face” of your business; it needs to make a stellar first impression on your visitors and convince them that you’re knowledgeable, credible and trustworthy. Here are some tips that will help give your credibility a boost.
- Show off any press mentions and awards that your business has garnered.
- Show logos of clients, testimonials or any numbers or stats associated with it.
- Video testimonials add even more credibility. If you can’t get video testimonials, you should try to include photos of the clients that are giving the testimonials.
- The easiest way to establish your legitimacy is to make your address and contact information readily available and easy to find.
- If your site collects private information, you should display site security and privacy policy.
- Update Your Website Regularly, an out-of-date website can really hurt your credibility.
8) Become A Speed Freak and Mobile Friendly
Everybody hates a website that takes time to load. Page loading time is as important as any other factor that impacts user experience. And many times, we’ll let it slide to accommodate better aesthetic design, nifty functionality or to add more content to web pages. Unfortunately, website visitors tend to care more about speed than all the bells and whistles we want to add to our websites.
Microsoft speed specialist and computer scientist Harry Shum believes 0.25 seconds of difference in page load time — faster or slower — is the magic number dictating competitive advantages for online businesses.
With Google penalising websites in search results for not being mobile-optimised by pushing them behind, it’s essential to get your site mobile-friendly (Responsive across device), at the same time consider the speed and performance. Mobile optimization can improve visibility, increase sales, generate more traffic, and boost customer engagement.
9) Leverage Analytic and User Testing Data to Continuously Improve Your Home Page
Your home page design should evolve and change over time as needed with appropriate test and iterations. The best homepages aren’t always static. A more effective home page will reduce your bounce rate, increase time spent on your site and increase the number of pages per visit. Keep a track of the changes you make, so you can compare these stats from both before and after you made the change.
There are many tracking tools like Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, MixPanel, Totango and lot more, which could offer you all required stats make the best use of it.
However, most design decisions are local; that means that you can’t universally answer whether some layout is better than the other one as you need to analyze it from a very specific point of view.
As with everything, keep trying, keep testing, and keep optimizing, and you will find the perfect combo!
Conclusion
Since home pages can significantly impact a website’s impression, designers should pay attention when crafting them. The secret to a great web page design is to understand the universal rules of good design and follow them all the time. Above all, understand the goal of your home page is to answer the basic questions a visitor will have when arriving at your site or visiting again.
Bottom line: Make visitors feel at home on your homepage. A good home page often turns a visitor into a customer…
Hope this will help you ensure a rich experience for your users when they visit your website.
Here is the snapshot of a article, a perfect webpage that converts a users into a potential user and finally into a lead.
There is no one good way to do this, and these steps are only guidelines – you need not follow them to the letter (I don’t). I encourage you to experiment to find what works best for you. For beginners, however, this should cover some of the important bases.
Do you have additional tips to share? Leave them in the comments section.
