Your homepage is your online shop front and needs to capture the potential customer’s interest instantly. We all know from experience that if a homepage looks confusing or messy, we switch off and look elsewhere for the product or service we were researching.
A website homepage requires several essential elements to effectively engage visitors and guide them towards conversion. Key components include clear Calls To Action (CTAs) to direct user journeys, intuitive navigation for ease of use, and engaging visuals, as people process visuals 600,000 times faster than text. Additionally, readily available contact information and honest reviews or testimonials build trust and credibility with potential customers.
So, the homepage of your website needs to be attractive to look at and give a clear message about what your business does. Below are top tips for the elements you require to engage customers with your brand.
Below are 7 essential elements for every website homepage
Why is a Clear Call To Action (CTA) essential for your website?
When a visitor has managed to find your website amongst a vast array of others, what happens next? Make their journey easy to your goal, whether that’s buying a product, inquiring about a service or downloading a document. Add clear CTA’s across your homepage, guiding visitors along your sales funnel. Keep the CTA simple, making it obvious to the visitor what the next action for them is and don’t try putting in too many CTA with different requests, as this will confuse the visitor. For example, if your goal is to get them to subscribe to an e-newsletter, have a signup box at the top of the page and repeat the message halfway down or near the bottom so it’s still in their minds once they’ve consumed other information on the page.
Why is clear navigation important for a website?
Clear navigation helps your visitors have a simpler experience on your website, causing them less frustration and increasing your chances of a sale or enquiry. Your navigation bar is generally the area of the website which gets the most traffic, so it needs to highlight the key areas of your website clearly. If you’re confused about which pages warrant being the main focus, take a look at your Google Analytics (GA) and determine which pages get the most traffic. If appropriate, have the pages with the most traffic visible in the navigation bar. Sub-menus from the main navigation bar can be a great way of increasing traffic to pages of importance to your brand that visitors may not have considered.
3: Engaging Visuals
People process visuals 600,000 times faster than text.* This goes a long way to explaining why engaging visuals are so important on a homepage. Using high-quality stock photos take a look at my seven sites for free images for commercial use here, explainer, take a look at my seven sites for free images for commercial use here; explainer videos, product images, infographics or even a creative colour scheme can break up the text information on your homepage dimension to get the visitor engaged. Remember, too, that Google encourages embedding YouTube videos to help with SEO.
4: Contact Information
This is important; don’t make your visitors go through to your contact page to get the essential contact information. This may be a phone number or email address with a link to the contact page for more information, or potentially, your address will be needed on the homepage if you’re encouraging people to visit a physical location.
5: Reviews & Testimonials
Having honest reviews on your homepage provides a level of trust to the visitor. You can add these or use widgets from sites like TripAdvisor, Trust Pilot or Feefo. Ask previous clients to send testimonials and include pictures or visuals of them using the product or responding to the service. Include any recent positive media you may have received.
6: Accreditations & Awards
If you are part of an official organisation or governing body for your industry, please highlight this on your homepage using the logo. This once again builds trust with the visitor that you are a reputable business. The same goes for awards; always highlight your achievements.
7: What Differentiates You?
Last but certainly not least, ensure your content, both text and visuals, expresses what makes your brand/product stand out from the competition. For example, could you explain what your service or product does to solve an issue or how your awards and experience make you an industry leader?
*Source – https://www.ragan.com/