5 Steps to An Effective Homepage
How To Improve Your Website’s Homepage, Tips from a Brooklyn Web Design Company
If you’re toying with the idea of a website redesign or feel as if your website isn’t generating enough conversions, it might be time to take a look at your home page with a Brooklyn Web Design company. The home page is responsible for directing traffic to and around your site, and serves a very important part in the overall success of your site. Despite this, many websites lack a good home page- and we don’t want yours to be one of them. So here are 5 critical steps for an effective home page without the use of a Brooklyn web design or New York web design company, both of which are highly professional and educated, but can be expensive and take time to get in touch with.
Page speed.
In a world of lightning fast technology and high expectations, it’s important for your home page to load quickly. A slow home page is a problem that needs to be addressed ASAP before it sabotages your website. On average, a user will wait 2 or 3 seconds for a page to load before clicking away from pages that fail to load within this time frame. Before publishing your site, make sure your homepage loads quickly and without any hiccups, or you risk losing viewers and missing conversions.
The right amount of text.
It can be tempting to squish a ton of information onto your homepage- you want the viewer to have plenty of information right off the bat. Right? Well, not really. Big blocks of text that aren’t broken up and create a wall of text will be skipped over. As mentioned above, readers want instant gratification so reading a big chunk of text won’t do. This being said, there should also be enough text that the user understands what your site is about and has the right information to direct themselves to the right areas of the website. Try to avoid big white spaces of no text, as well as long text blocks.
A clear message.
Someone who stumbles upon your site will choose whether they will stay or click away within the first few seconds. If the first critical seconds fail to inform the guest what the site is about, or confuses them in any way, they’re going to navigate away from your site. This is why it’s important to have a clean, concise message on your home page. The main message is the most important piece of text on the entire site, as it draws visitors in and keeps them there long enough for the other elements of the site to get them hooked, so to speak. Be sure that your site only has one message on the home page and that the chosen message is featured where it can be seen easily. Also ensure that it makes sense and doesn’t contradict itself. Don’t be too wordy with your message- leave some of the juicy details for a different page of the site.
Multiple call to actions.
The whole point of a homepage is to generate interest among viewers and ultimately, get conversions. Call-to-actions, or CTAs, are simple and noninvasive ways to encourage viewers to sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase, request a coupon, sign up for a free trial, or reach out to the business owner. We’re generally taught to use only one CTA, however, having multiple strategically placed CTAs can have the same- if not better- conversion rate than the existence of one primary CTA. The CTAs used should all be different and shouldn’t be too forceful. If possible, they should be written in a friendly tone.
Contact information.
All websites should have contact information. However, what separates a great website from a good website is the location of the contact information. To reap the most success, contact information should be on the homepage of the site. This prime location ensures that the information is easy to find and access, making it more likely that potential customers will reach out to the business and increasing the likelihood of a conversion.
