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Your homepage is often the first impression a potential customer has of your business and the experience they have when they land on your homepage can make or break their decision to do business with you. The job of the homepage is to reflect, at a glance, what your business does, to reassure your visitors you are a reliable provider of what they are looking for, and to give a great first impression through a design and user experience which reflects your USP and place in the market. There are several key areas to think about when looking at your homepage with a critical eye.

Is your Homepage Navigation Clear?
Once visitors land on your homepage do they know what to do next? They won’t know what pages to view next or what actions to take if you don’t provide them with direction. Nurture your users with clear navigation and intuitive calls-to-action which help solve their problems as well as providing them with solutions. If you sell women’s clothing for example, it needs to be easy to get to the item of clothing they are looking for (or to be inspired) from your homepage.

Does Your Homepage Look Good on All Devices?
To give your visitors the best experience of your website it needs to be responsive to whichever device they are using to browse. A responsive website automatically reshapes and resizes itself depending on the device your site is being viewed on, as well as adjusting the navigable elements to suit the device (such as simplifying menu bars and product displays for a mobile). Read our blog post on responsive websites to find out more.

Are your Visuals Appealing to your Audience?
If you expect a visitor to invest in your brand you need to make sure you’ve invested in it too. This means a well designed logo and high quality images which show off you, your staff or your products in the best possible light. Don’t be tempted to have a go at product photography, use a professional photographer who has experience in your field of work.
Is your Content Simple and Powerful?
A new website visitor needs to get a feel for your offering in just a few seconds, so your copy needs to be clear and appealing. Avoid the use of jargon or ambiguous terminology and don’t waffle! Say what you do and state your mission clearly. The homepage is the place to give a great first impression, not your company history, so keep to the point. If you’re not great with words, use a copywriter.

Can you Gain Trust Easily?
Whether your brand is new or old, people don’t trust so much what you say about your company, they trust what other people say. They need reassurance that your brand is genuine, especially if they are expected to make a payment online. It’s all about peer to peer reviews these days and this trend is growing, so you need to make it easy for people to see endorsements when they arrive on your homepage. You can pay for third party review sites like Trust Pilot or Feefo, but you can also collect reviews from Facebook and embed them onto your site or include a customer quote. Your social media channels help to gain trust in your brand since they offer a way for potential customers to find out more about you. Make sure you link to your social media channels from your homepage and keep them updated with relevant, interesting content which reflect your brand and values.

A warning sign that your website homepage is not performing well is an extremely high bounce rate (over 70). If you are getting lots of visitors to your website and they are mostly leaving after just a few seconds on your homepage something is wrong!

Here at Spartan we’re experts in creating websites which provide an excellent user experience, so get in touch here if you are concerned about your existing website and want to chat through your options.