4 best practices for a successful homepage design

Your website's homepage is like the window display of your shop: its purpose is to help visitors understand what you do, and above all to give them the desire to come inside and learn more! These 4 best practices will help you create a homepage that generates engagement and converts casual visitors into leads.

1. Have a clear objective

In the vast majority of cases, the purpose of your homepage is to present the company and highlight its advantages. But it could also be to present the latest news (if you run a journal or magazine, for example), or bestsellers (if your site is an online shop)… This objective must match the visitor's needs, and your layout will depend on it.

2. Don't overload the page

Even more so than for the "inner" pages of your site, keep it simple and clear. To return to the shop analogy, trying to put everything in the window display (all the products, the till, the catalogues, and the sales staff) would harm your business: from the street, the visitor would not know where to look, would feel like everything was being thrown at them all at once, and would most likely not even understand what the shop sells! And if they did venture inside, they would find a large empty room — you would have a hard time guiding them from the product they need all the way to the checkout.

In design terms, this translates into a layout that is as legible as possible, with few elements. Leave room for large, eye-catching headings and beautiful images that add meaning. Use simple lists instead of long paragraphs, and optionally embed a video with a "play" button (the visitor should be able to start it themselves — an auto-playing video can feel intrusive)… In short, "Less is more". This quote from the minimalist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe dates from 1947, but remains as relevant as ever for web design in 2017!

The average online attention span is 3 seconds. This means you have 3 seconds to convince the visitor they should stay on your site; if they find nothing of interest in that time, they will leave.

3. Create engagement and support navigation

Still with the objective of keeping the visitor on your site so they can discover its content, your homepage must display clear navigation. Visitors should not have to search for what they want — they should find it very quickly. To achieve this, use familiar patterns from the web (navigation at the top or on the side, coloured links, buttons…). There is no point in developing new ways of doing things, however innovative they may be, if they are difficult to understand and slow down the visitor's navigation on your site.

4. Have a way to convert visitors into leads

From your homepage, integrate a CTA (Call to Action) to convert visitors into leads and capture their contact details (a "Subscribe to our newsletter" link, or "Request a quote", for example). Do not multiply CTAs — the effect will be the opposite and drive the visitor away, as they will feel they have to give information in order to access even the slightest piece of content. Furthermore, it is pointless integrating a CTA into a slider (slideshow). Only 1% of internet visitors click on slideshows, and of that 1%, 89% click on the first slide and never on the others.

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The homepage is certainly the most important page on your website. First impressions count, especially online — so put these tips into practice and you will see your visitor statistics improve!

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