How to design the perfect homepage 

They say there’s no place like home and when it comes to your website, there is no place like your homepage. This is most likely the first place your visitors will visit, so it’s essential to make a strong first impression. This is where your homepage comes in.

During your years spent scouring the internet, you’ve likely seen great homepages, terrible homepages, and everything in between. It may seem simple, but designing the perfect homepage is a process that requires a lot of steps. In this guide, you’ll find our top tips to help you design and build the perfect homepage.

 

Do: Include the following key features

No two homepages are the same, but most pages should have the following:

• An eye-catching heading and subheading. These should catch the eye and give your customers as much information as possible about your business. For example, if you sell custom-made summer dresses, anyone visiting your website should know that this is what you do from the heading and heading.
• Calls to action and backlinks. Telling your customers what to do ensures that at least some of them will do it. If you don’t ask your customers to buy something, can you really be surprised if they aren’t doing it? Backlinks also help your customers to find what they need, whether it’s a different page or answers to any questions they may have.
• Reviews and social proof. Today’s consumers want to ensure they get value for money. The best way to build trust in your brand is to include social proof of your business or products. Customer reviews, links to social media channels, and more help to establish and build trust in your business.
• Unique Selling Points. Unless you’ve cracked the code on a one-of-a-kind product or service, you will have competitors. On your homepage, we recommend that you briefly explain what sets you apart and why a potential customer should choose you.
• Engaging visuals. Lastly, you need great visuals to catch the eye. This could be images, a video, or an infographic – just to name a few examples. This will help to attract and keep users on your page.

 

Do: Show your brand

For many businesses, the homepage of their website is just one part of their business. As a result, it should look like the other parts of your business. Take a moment to think of one of your favourite brands. It’s highly likely that their ads, shop fronts, and the homepage of their website will look very similar. They will use the same colours, the same tone of voice, and similar design elements. This consistency of brands helps to show customers that they’re in the right place and they are interacting with something familiar – which helps them to relax.

When designing your website, it’s essential to showcase your brand. The simplest place to start is by ensuring that the colours and fonts that you use are consistent with any other marketing collateral that you use. Next, add your logo and the tone of voice that you use in your communications. Finally, keep your website up to date. Should your branding change, ensure that your website reflects these changes as well. If people don’t recognise a website or think they’re on the wrong one, they won’t hesitate to leave your website.

 

Don’t: Make it too cluttered

A cluttered homepage never looks good. In fact, it can be very off-putting and confusing for anyone who may visit your website. Whilst it may be tempting to cram as much information as possible onto your homepage, we strongly caution against this.

For starters, homepages that are too busy take a while to load. If your page is slow, people are very likely to give up and go somewhere else. Load speeds are one of the biggest contributors to a high bounce rate, so it pays to keep your homepage lean and mean.

Secondly, a cluttered page is confusing. A fair share of your visitors will be encountering your business for the first time, so they will be looking for more information about you and what you can do for them. If your page is too busy, they may get confused or struggle to find what they’re looking for. This can leave them hesitant to deal with you or simply scare them away.

Finally, a well-designed page will look clean and professional. This will impress visitors and make your business look better in their eyes.

 

Do: Optimize for multiple devices

Today’s consumers can access your website on a range of devices. These devices come in a range of sizes, which can change the look of a webpage. If your website isn’t optimised for different devices – especially mobile phones – you will be losing potential customers and visitors to your competitors.

When designing your homepage, and the rest of your website for that matter, you need to ensure that they are optimised for the various devices that your customers use.

 

Don’t: Set and forget

Designing your website doesn’t mean that your work is done. In fact, it’s only the beginning. A successful homepage will be updated regularly with new content and information. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is that things can go wrong. Links can stop working, images can stop loading, or any other aspect of your website could run into issues. If you aren’t checking your homepage and running regular maintenance, you could be losing customers due to problems on your page.

The second reason relates to search performance. Search algorithms try to give users the best results possible and they use a number of factors to determine the relevance of a particular homepage or website. An active website (one that is updated regularly) looks better in the eyes of the algorithm. So, making regular updates can help to boost your performance in search results.

 

Wrapping up

When it comes to designing your webpage, perfection for you may look different to someone else. So long as you keep the tips in this guide and mind, you’ll be heading in the right direction. If you’re looking for web development or software development, Zudu has you covered.