A good home page makes visitors want to know more and do something about it.
The formula is simple. Catch people's attention with quality images. Tell people what you do with a large, punchy heading. Tell someone why they should choose you. Tell them what you want them to do next. A great home page will do all of these things in less than 10 seconds.
The home page is often the first page on your website people see and if your home page isn't working well it's the only page people will see, because it takes too long for people to find what they're looking for. Don't make your home page too busy or too wordy.
1. Say what you do in the main heading of your homepage
The shorter you can make your main heading and still explain what you do, the better. Shorter headings are faster to read, it's that simple. Common heading mistakes with home pages are:
Having several headings the same size so diluting the visitor's focus.
Not having a heading and just going straight into paragraph text.
The heading is too small so it doesn't grab the visitor's attention.
2. Tell people why they should choose you
Great home page text not only tells people what you do but why they should choose you. What makes you unique? What do you have that your competitors don't have? Play to your strengths. Have you won awards? Do you specialise in a particular type of customer or area? What do you have that your competitors don’t have? Play to your strengths; have you won awards? Have you been in business for 10+ years?
A couple of short customer reviews on your home page help here too. If you need inspiration, have a look at how businesses in the Rocketspark website showcase do it.
3. First impressions: make your homepage visually interesting
Quality photos grab the visitor's attention. Rather than several small images, one large image or a slideshow of large images are much more visually impressive. People can smell stock photos a mile away. For some industries they're a necessary evil but if you can avoid them, do it! People want real deal images of you, your business, your work and/or your customers. If you're not confident with photography or layout, a Rocketspark designer can help you get this right. Website visitors will trust you more, so you'll be more likely to convert visitors to leads.
4. Call to action: get them to do something
What is a call to action? Put simply, it's telling visitors to do something. This might be as simple as displaying a phone number in a prominent place on your site but that won't get visitors to check out more of your website. Visitors might not be ready to call you after only seeing the home page.
The best way to get visitors to go to another page of your website is with a button. The Rocketspark website builder makes it easy to add buttons to your home page. How many buttons should you have on your home page? You never know how far down the page a visitor might be ready to take action, so it pays to have call to action buttons fairly consistently down the page for each section. What other pages might you want people to go to? On the home page, you might link to key services, an about us page to get to know more about you or make contact.
Don’t put too many buttons in the same spot though, as the more buttons you have, the more the visitor has to think about what to click on so it takes them longer. For that reason one button is ideal but having a more subtly styled button next to a main one can give an alternative option (for example, Book Now and Our Services). Make it fast and easy for the visitor to click their way through your site!
People browse websites by scanning the content. If you don't have clear headings, people won't bother reading your text and will leave your site faster. This is why clear headings are really important. If you have paragraph content on your home page, make sure it's broken up by clear headings but make sure the first heading is larger than the other headings so it is the first thing people read.
The winning homepage design formula
Grab the visitor's attention, tell them what you do, tell them why they should choose you, tell them what you want them to do next. All in under ten seconds.
Extra for experts
Try making some changes and measure for any improvements in Google Analytics. A more effective home page will increase your engagement rate (the share of visits where people stay, scroll or click rather than leaving straight away), increase time on your site and increase the number of pages per visit. Just keep a track of when you made the change so you can compare these stats from both before and after you made the change. If you're on Rocketspark, your monthly performance email is an easy place to watch for a lift in enquiries and calls too. Not on Rocketspark yet? Start a free trial and try these steps on one of our website templates.
About the author
Jeremy Johnson is a co-founder of Rocketspark and leads the product side of the business. He started out as a freelance designer in 2006 and has been building websites for New Zealand businesses, and helping other designers build them, since 2009. He's the author of Creative Freedom, a practical guide to running a sustainable design business, written with Rocketspark CEO and co-founder Grant Johnson.
