Your website design could be one of the very first things a new customer sees from your business. With that being said, a solid website design is important to be able to catch the attention of potential new customers. Not only does your website need to have certain features to raise positive opinions, but it also needs to happen the second a user visits your page.
The home page is the most important page of your website. Your home page has to have everything needed to grab someone’s attention because they might not even make it to your other pages. It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not. This means, that if you want to draw in a potential customer, you have to sell it right at the start, which is your home page. Let’s talk about 7 home page must-haves that should be included on the home page of your website.
Strong and Clear Headline
Your home page needs to tell your visitors exactly what you do within seconds. Now, we aren’t talking about a paragraph that doesn’t explain what you do until the very end, we are talking about a short, strong, and clear headline. Save your long paragraphs about what you do and why you do it for your other pages. The main goal is to let people know what you do in a nutshell. Then, if they continue, they will find the long copy later on. Here are 4 examples of websites that have strong headlines:
Easy Navigation
Nothing is more aggravating than a difficult-to-use website! Have you ever been on a website that took you 10 minutes to find one thing and nothing made sense? Well, don’t let that be your site. Navigation is a high priority for a lot of users. Not everyone is tech-savvy and your website has to accommodate for those people. Even tech-savvy users don’t want to spend 10 minutes trying to find something. Your navigation should be clear on where you need to go to find a certain item. Check out these websites that practice great examples of easy website navigation:
Information That Is Easy To Understand
Depending on what your business is, it is very likely that someone will visit your page and not fully understand the scope of your work. Well, that’s where you come in! Your job is to write content that anyone can understand, and we mean ANYONE. You can’t always talk in technical terms that make sense to you because they might not make sense to your customers. Just because they are viewing your web page, doesn’t mean they fully understand everything. Your home page is a place for clarity and easy-to-understand content. You can utilize more technical terms throughout your site, but as far as the home page goes, anyone should be able to understand it!
Supporting Images
Learning and viewing styles will be different for all of your customers. Some people like to read 10 pages of information while others prefer visuals. This is why supporting images that illustrate your written content are so important on your homepage. Your words may get lost to visual viewers, but if you have clear supporting images, the message can still get through. Think about the content on your home page and then think about 1-3 supporting images that could explain that content. It’s also important to make sure your images are properly formatted to have a quick load time. Studies show that 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load. This means that image load time is just as important as the actual images.
Clear Call To Action
A call to action is essential for the home page of your website. You got a customer to visit your site, now what? Your call to action needs to tell viewers exactly what you want them to do. Whether it's subscribing to something, purchasing something, or even just viewing something, your call to action needs to direct them to this. Attractive CTA’s that offer an incentive are a great way to get your visitors to complete your CTA. Here are some websites that have effective CTA’s that make it hard not to click:
Client Testimonials
Client testimonials could potentially make or break a potential customer’s opinion. It’s simple, people care about what other people have to say. We all look for reviews or ask friends on Facebook before purchasing something or finding a service. Well, that doesn’t change when someone new is visiting your home page. People want to see reliable testimonials from happy customers. It’s important to try and showcase these testimonials on the first page so your customers don’t have to go looking for them. They should be easily visible with eye-catching features to help make them stand out to potential customers.
Aesthetically Pleasing Design
Finally, having the overall package of a solid home page includes an aesthetically pleasing design. The attractiveness of your layout and content is very important to the first impression of a new customer. It’s essentially the overall feeling of your entire brand. In fact, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive. Having an aesthetically pleasing website design not only pulls all of your content together but also plays into catching the attention of new customers.
Colors play an important role in the overall feel of your design. For example, if you are a medical brand you may want to use calming colors like blues, greens, and purples, or soft calming colors. Whereas, if your business is something more exciting, like a toy store, choosing reds, yellows, oranges, or bright fun colors would work better. Of course, you should always follow your brand guidelines when designing your home page to create consistency, but if possible it is a good practice to design with colors that create the feeling you want visitors to have.
To wrap it up, your home page is the very first introduction a new visitor has when viewing your site. Your home page could potentially make or break their decision to become a customer. There are a lot of important features that go into web design and we talked about some of the essentials that should be included especially on your home page. If your website needs a little tweaking or maybe needs a full redo, reach out to 30|90 Marketing today to see what we can do to help!