There is a saying, never judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, we all judge by the cover. In regards to the web, your homepage is your “book cover”. If you are a small business, your “book cover” is just as important as a store front or a business card. Here are some tips to get the most out of your homepage.
Keep It Simple
Don’t try to be like a large company’s website. They’ve conditioned their repeat users to know how to navigate through their widgets, thumbnails and menus. Think back to the first time you went to Amazon or Ebay, it took several minutes to find what you were looking for. With those companies, even if you didn’t find what you were looking for on your first try, you most likely will give them a shot again since their brand is so well known. Small businesses don’t have that luxury. Often you get only one chance to get a customer. So keep it simple and communicate your product or service with a stand out image. You don’t want to confuse your potential customers with excess clutter.
Be conservative with the scroll
If you are highlighting products you sell on your home page, limit the number that you present. You don’t know what type of computer or mobile device your customer is using. If there is a lot of information on the home page it can lead to a very slow load time for them. As you can see with Whittard Chelsea home page, when you land on the homepage you see most of whole page.
Link to categories or sections where you can present your products. If you want to highlight specials or create opportunities for product promotion, avoid making it look like a large restaurant menu. Instead, think of highlighting a select few items and create an image to promote it.
Display the right links
If you keep your home page simple make sure that you are displaying the links that your customer wants. Generally you should have an About, Product, New or Blog, and Contact (unless you are having very easy to see contact info on all your pages). It is important that visitors can discover what your business is about and how they can participate. Keeping your mobile site in mind is important. Since users who visit via phone will not be engaging in prolonged browsing, you want to get them to the correct content as quickly as possible. It is important to keep an eye on your analytics to see what type of device your website is being viewed on. If you are noticing that more mobile devices are starting to view your site, you need to adjust to make their browsing experience better.
Keep Featured Products Above The Fold
Display products you’re proud of or photographs that pop off the screen. It boils down to curb appeal, when you walk down a street full of clothing and art stores, they don’t display last year’s discounted trends, but their best products. So highlight your best products and entice them to act. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still highlight discounted products as mentioned in the second point, but just make sure it will draw in your customers.
Make It Current
Some businesses want to promote their social media outlets in other ways than widgets. If your business is active on Twitter or Facebook 
you are able to offer a live feed on your home page. Seeing social media updates on the home page is a way of creating excitement for your company. If you chose to highlight Twitter, then you must stay active on there. If your last tweet was a month ago, it will reflect poorly on your company and customers won’t stick around.
Consistency
Select a design, template, color and logo very carefully. You will want these elements to reflect your product and services across multiple platforms. By having consistency both in the virtual and physical world you will increase your brand awareness.
Attach a featured image to your Homepage and pages
In the age of social media, sharing links is a normal occurrence. I have noticed often when I go to share a link, the image thumbnail does not match the article. You don’t want to be linking to a serious article and have a thumbnail a random image showing up next to the link. Without a thumbnail, the link click through rate drops substantially. If your company does an abstract service it can sometimes be hard to come up with a feature image, therefore, use your logo or an avatar.
Please share links to your innovative homepages in the comments below.
