It is estimated that around 1.7 billion websites exist in the digital space with 576,000 new websites being created every day! Websites are replacing traditional brick-and-mortar stores as they allow customers to purchase products and services from the comfort of their homes. However, building a successful website can take time!
When a new or returning customer visits your website, the first page they will get directed to is your homepage. The homepage will be the first interaction a customer has with your brand and will play a crucial role in establishing a connection and communicating brand value.
Designing a homepage that is both captivating and includes the relevant information on your product or service is an extremely hard task, however, this is the main barrier agencies and brands face when looking at increasing conversions. The fact is that a well-designed homepage is key to increasing your conversion rate.
Working on the design and content of your homepage can feel like an extremely overwhelming task as nowadays, users have a very low attention span. Once a visitor lands on your homepage, you have around 10 seconds to make a lasting impression. If you are not able to communicate your message in that time, chances are you will lose that sale.
Optimizing the design of your homepage is a great way to welcome users to your website, communicate brand value, increase ranking on SERP’s, direct clients to specific pages or products and most importantly, increase your conversions.
Let’s take a look at a few tips to help you design a homepage that converts!
Tips To Help Design A Homepage That Converts
Before designing the homepage of your website, it’s important to start with a shift in mindset. The focus of your design should be centered around what your ideal customer would like to see on your homepage. So before you start ask yourself; what are my customers looking for? What are their needs? What are they interested in?
Let’s take a look at a few tips to help you with your homepage design:
Focus On Customer Persona
Before designing your homepage, it’s important to **know **exactly who your customer persona is. Outlining key characteristics specific to your ideal customer will help you plan the objectives you would like your customer to take when visiting your homepage.
Understanding your ideal customer’s thoughts, apprehensions, needs, and wants will help you further develop the tone of your brand by creating a message that resonates with your audience’s language.
Simplistic Design
When creating your homepage it can be tempting to crowd the page with as much information as possible on the product or service. But the fact is that a busy page can be extremely detrimental to your conversion. Remember what I said, you have 10 seconds to impress! Users don’t want to spend hours scrolling through long texts on your homepage.
With this in mind, the first key to your success is to keep it simple! Ensure that your design is engaging, there is little text, and the navigation menu is simple and intuitive. Also, avoid using strong contrasting colors to make your page easily consumable.
An important thing to also keep in mind is that users interact with other websites on a daily basis and because of this, there are a few features everyone expects to see on a homepage:
Logo: Logos are always located on the top left corner of a homepage. Users expect to see a clear logo and expect the logo to have the ability to take them back to the homepage of the website.
Navigation: Most users are familiar with horizontal navigation. If you are an e-commerce store you might opt to include vertical navigation. With this in mind, stick to designing a navigation menu that is familiar to most users.
Footer: The footer of your homepage and website is where users expect to find any additional information or pages that are relevant to the brand or product.
Page Load Time
The time it takes for your website or homepage to load has a huge impact on your conversion. If your homepage takes a while to load, website visitors will get impatient and leave.
Associating high bounce rates with your website will also negatively impact your organic ranking on the search engines results page. To ensure your website loads faster avoid using large chunks of text, large images files, and any other complicated elements that would jeopardize your page load time.
So in short, focusing on increasing your site speed helps you increase conversions and helps you rank higher in search engines.
Brand Value
The homepage is the perfect place to outline your brand value. Also known as your value proposition, this short chunk of text (usually consisting of a headline and a subheading), is used to emphasize what your website is about, what does your product or service do, how useful is your brand to your user, and lastly why choose you over the competition.
The key through your value proposition is to build a connection with your site visitor to show them how your brand can help solve their problem.
Call-To-Action (CTA)
Many businesses and brands neglect the benefits of including a clear CTA on their homepage, however, outlining the desired action you would like your website visitors to take plays a crucial role in increasing your conversion rate.
The truth is that website users want to be told what to do! If you give your users too many choices, chances are they will not pick anything at all! With this in mind, make sure to have one clear CTA that stands out on your homepage.
Contact Information
Including contact information on your website is a great way to promote trust between the user and your brand. In fact, 64% of website visitors would like to have the contact information included on the homepage of their website.
Users want to know that it is easy to connect with your brand if they require any additional information. You might consider including a live chat, number, email, and even an FAQ section on your website.
Images
Lastly, including high-quality images is a great way to help boost your brand’s value proposition. Make sure that the images used look professional and emanate your brand. Using images is a great way to engage your users and uplift your homepage.
Track Your Conversions Today…
Now that you have all the tips you need to optimize your homepage for success, start tracking your progress! With a tool like Oviond, you can connect your Google Analytics account to monitor how your website changes are impacting your overall performance, and most importantly, your conversions!
Start your 15-day free trial today!
