5 ways to make your home page a hit
When you’re trying to sell your home, estate agents recommend clearing out the clutter to show off your best features. I think the same applies to your website home page. It’s the first place new visitors land, so you want to make a good impression.
Here are my 5 tips for a winning home page.
1. Clarity of purpose
Your home page should tell me very clearly and simply how you and your services can help me, so share your mission in a few well chosen words. I’m talking a paragraph at most. About Us will go into more detail about you and your ethos, so you don’t need to say lots here. Keep this page very clear and straightforward.
2. Navigation
I want to know exactly where to go next. Your home page should set the agenda, so your choice of words and destinations is important. Being too clever here can be a mistake. I see an awful lot of websites, and am a fan of the ones with the easiest navigation. The home page isn’t the place to surprise me, or to be oblique. Help me find my way around.
3. Call to action
What do you want me to do now I’m here? Call you? Read more? Look at this? Think about that? Don’t go overboard with your demands, but do try and get me to engage. The right words can pull me further into your site.
4. Evidence of life
Empty houses are harder to sell, and so are empty websites. I’d like to know you’re around, hard at work, helping people like me. Twitter feeds, blogs, video content. Have something on the home page that shows me you’re in business, right now. We’re talking tasters – headlines, logos, boxes – not the whole thing. Use your up-to-date content to lead me deeper into your website, and to reinforce your expertise.
5. Room to breathe
Sometimes I use the home page as a reference point, somewhere to go back to and orientate myself. In a large website, packed with valuable content, it’s good to have somewhere clear and simple to take a breath. (It’s a bit like returning to the blurb on the back of a book you’re reading. That concise reminder of the story that grabbed your attention is useful.) So don’t overload it. Less is more.
If you want help with your Home Page, get in touch. Contact Sharon on 07985 015300.
Hi Sharon,
I’ve just finished writing a home page for a client (15 minutes ago) and loved this post. Verbalised a lot of the things that were going through my mind about cutting down the clutter – great analogy about home page being like blurb on back of book…concise reminder of main points from the story.
Now must get on with the other pages…do you have any advice for the “about us” page?!
Hi Jim,
Funny you should say that – here’s one we prepared earlier! https://www.valuablecontent.co.uk/but-what-about-us-tips-for-your-about-us-page/
Really glad it was useful – good luck with the rest of the site,
Sharon