Generating business leads from your website requires a few critical elements in your design and that obviously begins with the homepage. The homepage should always offer the optimum visual ease and address the elements of visual hierarchy as a priority.
Moreover, as soon as audience lands on your homepage there should be a clear call to action. Letting audience stay on the homepage and quickly get access to what he was looking for, that is precisely the objective a homepage design should primarily gear at.
Here we introduce 10 inevitable factors need to consider while designing homepage:
1. Allow Users to Easy Access Homepage from Any Page
Websites that make users struggle to return to the homepage make surely a derogatory browsing experience. Make navigation user-friendly to make it easy to access the homepage from any page. A dedicated homepage menu is better than making people go through a round of back-clicks.
2. Use a Design Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy refers to the typical order of the displayed elements on a web page as per the perception of human eye. Visual hierarchy is incorporated in web design to give priority to various contents on webpage.
In web design this is called design hierarchy which often plays a crucial role to influence how users view your web page and give priority to certain things. When it comes to homepage obviously design hierarchy will help users prioritize, stay longer on page and do things that go in favor of your business objective.
3. List out All Most Important Pages on Homepage
The homepage is the launch pad of all that you are going to offer to the users. So for quick access to your content in other pages, you must provide a list, starting with the recently updated one.
After letting users browse your contents and stay on their required pages is what is important to make them respond to business propositions or simply boosting traffic.
Almost all world-renowned websites in every niche follow the principle of facilitating quick access to other web pages from a list on the homepage. It cannot be different in your case if you want more traffic.
4. Create a Positive and Catchy Impression of Your Site
Other than so-called technical jargons and intricacies of various design aspects on a web page what matters most is the impression that it creates as soon as a visitor lands on the homepage.
Is it giving a positive vibe? Is the homepage simple and attractive enough to catch the attention of the users? These are the things to ask while designing a homepage.
For instance, a travel website with too many advertisements on the homepage may create a negative impression that labels it as a site with “more promotion and less content”. On the other hand, a site offering catchy homepage content with optimum readability and least clamor will have a positive impression.
5. Highlight Content Effectively
Highlighting content often leads to better readability. Average time spent on a web page is less than a few seconds because before reading the whole content we cannot make up our mind on its relevance.
Who will like to risk his time in going through a thousand word content without having an idea whether it offers the required information or offers some unique values?
Highlighting content with underlines, bold fonts, heads, sub-heads, and bullets help users to have a quick look at the relevant points and important areas and that obviously helps build up traffic.
6. Communicate the Web Site’s Value and Purpose
The homepage is where your traffic lands in and so it is the place to let users know your website’s niche, value proposition, and purpose.
Apart from telling about your business niche, industry certification, and your specific offers, using third-party validation like client testimonials, positive reviews, awards, and recognition is also important.
All these combined together let users know the value and purpose of your website. Without this value proposition, a site often looks orphan and users generally tend to avoid it.
7. Limit Prose Text with length on the Homepage
If you are offering text content on the homepage, make sure that the size of it corresponds to the page length. Users generally do not prefer to read the remaining content if it is in another page. Actually homepage content should be crisp, short and more direct than other pages.
8. Announce Changes to a Web Site
A website may go through some changes in its design, technical aspects or content from time to time. But your audience should have a prior idea of what is going to happen.
Otherwise, it would create confusion and negative feedbacks on the part of users. By announcing changes you actually can tune up your users and set an expectation for the forthcoming.
9. Use graphics to show real content, not just to decorate your homepage
Using graphic representation often leads to better readability and more attractive features of the content. Graphics are not a just appealing decoration on your homepage but graphics is an inevitable way to add more value to your content.
Not only for contents with statistics, numbers and similar elements, any type of informative content can be supplemented to enhance their readability.
10. Include a Search Input Box
Search box makes it easier to answer to the user searches and guide to the respective content quickly. Especially as your site grows heavier with content, search box remains to be the easy way to find a content user is asking for.
Can you imagine the trouble to find a blog or article on a particular topic in a content-rich site? Simply because of the absence of a search input box all your contents may not be hit by potential users.
