A Stunning Headline
You have 5 seconds, that’s how long you have for your visitors to form an opinion of your business. A stunning headline needs needs only 3 seconds for your visitor to get what you’re selling them. Headlines tend to be short and straight to the point and it’s the number 1 piece of copy you need to capture your visitors attention.
A good headline usually are written for your visitors that already have an inclination to buy your product or service. Have a headline that also touches on a pain point of your visitors. To reiterate, have a headline which is short, simple, and touches on your visitors pain point. If you’ve no clue how to write it effectively, you may want to consider hiring a professional copywriter.
Primary Calls-to-Action
A great homepage is designed to influence your visitor to stay, scroll, and click. Three important things that any great homepage succeeds at. You’ll notice that high performing websites have Calls-to-Action (CTA) positioned at various levels on the website.
These CTAs should be visually striking, and is a contrast to the theme of your website yet doesn’t look out of place. Effective CTA’s have short and action-oriented copy, this informs your visitor what action they should take. Examples of CTA copy are "Sign up," "Apply Now" or "Try it for free."
High Quality Supporting Images
Most people are visual. High quality images further convey what your business is about. Use images that fit with your overall brand and have a customer focused theme. Your images are supposed to make your business more relatable and not just pure eye candy.
Make sure that the images you’re using are original, try to stay away from stock photos. Original images perform better and isn’t easily duplicated like stock photos.
Benefits
Describe what you do and also why it matters for your visitors. A lot of homepage fail at this point, because the benefits are usually more of a boasting platform rather than it being about your visitor.
When describing your benefits, make sure to shift the focus to the customers. Make it all about them & how your business what solve their problems. Remember, you’re not selling the mattress, you’re selling a good night of sleep.
Navigation
Having a great design, or copy wouldn’t mean much if the navigation of your website frustrates your visitors. Your homepage navigation could mean the difference between a conversion or a bounce.
Make sure that the navigation of your website is intuitive. Look through the design and determine if it would make natural sense for your visitor to scroll or click a certain way. Having a fluid navigation is a process and it usually includes a series of user tests. If you don’t have the time for that, then there are a number of software that helps you track and understand your visitors behavior.
Also make sure that the parts of your website that has high activity is given more priority in your website’s flow.
So those are the 5 tips for a great homepage. Is your homepage missing any elements you’ve read? How does your homepage compare to these tips? Share this article to that friend who’s looking for an improvement on their website!