5 Key Elements Every Website Homepage Needs
I am sure you will agree that by far the most important page of your website is the homepage. Usually, that is the first place where your visitors land and if it sucks, nobody will go further. That means that no matter how great content you have on your other pages, if your homepage is not good enough in terms of design and structure, you will suffer a lot.
So how to optimize your homepage and start receiving good results? In fact, that is not as easy as it sounds, but as you may expect, we are here to help.
(See also: 8 Tips For Writing an Awesome About us Page Content)
Clear navigation
You may assume that putting a navigation menu on your pages (and especially your website homepage!) is obvious, but we still think it is worth mentioning it. Your visitors need an easy way to navigate through your pages. If you do not include a menu on your homepage or make it difficult to find, you will have a major problem with SEO. One of the main metrics you need to follow is the so-called “bounce rate. That is the number of people that leave your website without clicking any links on it. And if you do not put a menu with links to your other website pages, your bounce rate will immediately jump which will also hurt your search engine rankings.
Great headline
Just as with a blog post or a news article, the headline’s purpose is to grab your visitors’ attention so that they will continue browsing through your website. When choosing a headline for your website homepage, try to come up with something as catchy as possible. You do not need to be very descriptive, just make sure that when reading it, your visitors will be curious to know what you can offer them.
If your business has a slogan, you can easily put it as a headline. But as many companies do not have a unified slogan, that doesn’t mean that you should skip the headline part.
Combine it with a great visual
O.K, your headline is essential, but if you simply put some text on the top of your page, the chances are that most people will not read it. The easiest way to grab your visitors’ attention is by putting a great header image as background to your headline.
Our suggestion is to choose an image that is relevant to your industry and think of it and the headline as one whole thing.
A call-to-action
Call-to-actions (CTAs) are a big trend among marketers these days and there is a simple explanation about that. Your website serves a certain purpose, whether it is to make your customers directly buy something or just contact you, and you have to somehow make them do that action. And as your visitors most certainly won’t come up in their heads with the same idea as yours, you need a call-to-action.
The best place you can put it is somewhere at the top of your website as you want as many visitors as possible to follow it.
Just check Oxxy’s own homepage, for example. We’ve put a Start now button at the center as we want you not only to see what we are capable of, but also to start building a website.
Latest news
Many smaller websites do not have a blog or a separate place to publish the latest news about the company. And if your website happens to be one of these, it’s a good idea to spare some place for news on your homepage.
Better keep them up to 3-5 short pieces of information about the recent development of your company. If you want to share something longer, include only a short overview on your homepage and link it to another page where your visitors can read the whole story.
Show client testimonials
Client testimonials are among the best success indicators to include on your homepage. That show that your customers trust you and view you as a reliable partner. Ask some of your clients to write a few words about the experience they had while working with you and then put the best ones on your homepage.
Always include the name of the person who is the author of the testimonials as well as his or her title and company. You can a small photo of each of them to make it look more reliable.
To sum it, you need to understand that the first impression is essential for your website success. That is why you need to make your website homepage as optimized as possible. The five elements we included in this article are just the basic kit – you definitely need all of them. And after that you can build on by including other things that can boost your site’s first impression, such as secondary call-to-actions, links to resources, more images, etc.
Want to create the perfect website for you? Why not start now?
