Elements Of A Good Website Homepage?

To often I see small businesses miss what are the elements of a good website homepage.  Many companies don’t ask themselves just what makes a good website homepage?  With your homepage, you have roughly eight to ten second to get a visitor’s attention.  If you miss that attention window, they may leave and never return.  Never.  So in the great online battle for digital attention, make sure you win the war.

Make sure to apply the following tips for a good website homepage:

• Keep your homepage simple.  Reduce all the textual furniture.  People skim rather than read online, so get to the point.
• Include your value proposition in the first short paragraph of your website.  Your value proposition states in one sentence why potential customers should buy from you. A good website homepage immediately lets the visitor know the value you provide.
• Make sure your most important content is in the top 30% of your home page.  It’s called, “the top of the fold.”  At least 80% of what homepage visitors read first is in the top 25 to 30% of your upper homepage screen.  Make sure the top 25% tells 100% of what you do!
• Check the “Average Time On Site” statistics from your analytics report.  Google Anlytics is one of many that shows this.
• Keep your navigational menus either in the upper left to middle of your home page.  It’s called a heat map.  Visitors read web pages in an “F” pattern, starting with the upper left-hand corner.  Don’t forget this.  Place your key messaging where it’s easy to find within the upper to middle F pattern.
• Include contact info in the upper right-hand corner of your homepage.
• Include a one to two minute video in the middle of your homepage.  Make sure this video tells the story of what you do, including the benefits you provide your potential customers.
• Answer the “so what?” question for visitors.  Why should they care if they land on your homepage?  What can you do for them?  What can they take home today, after visiting your website, writing you, or calling you? A good website homepage answers all those questions.
• Offer value.  Don’t pitch.  Pitches are periods; value is a great novel.
• Know your visitors.  Know what you want them to do.  Make it easy for them to do it.

Bottom line: make visitors feel at home on your homepage.  A good home page often turns a visitor into a potential customer.

Stuart Atkins