What Makes A Home Page Effective? Explore 7 Crucial Tips

What Makes A Home Page Effective? Explore 7 Crucial Tips - The marketing Shack Blog

Why do I need a home page for a website?

The whole point of your home page is to make a first impression. You have about 7 seconds to make your impression on your potential customer. If they don’t like the look of you in that time it becomes more of a challenge to convince them to use you or your products and services. So the whole point of a home page? To make that 7 seconds count. 

After this, the job of the homepage is to get your customers off that page. In other words, it becomes your navigation page. You want people to go to another page of your website to reduce your bounce rate (which Google likes).

Your home page will also set what colours and themes you want throughout your website. Consider using websites such as Canva to help create a mood board of colours.

What should I have on my home page for a website?

So you want a website but don’t know what to put on the home page. We’ll we’ve got 7 definite things you should consider to put on there. We have put them in order of how we think you should see them on your website.

THE HEADER

1. Logo/Branding

The first thing people should see is you and your branding. They want to know they have got to the right website. So, for example, if you were a builder, and you went past someone in your van with the logo on, they would recognise that they have reached the right website due to seeing that logo straight away.

2. Navigation

The next things you should see is your menu. You need to let people navigate easily. On mobile, this might be the hamburger button. On a desktop, you should use a fixed menu at the top so it makes navigating your website simple.

3. Call to Action

Have a sale or want to point someone in the right direction quickly? Do it right at the beginning. Use it to get people off the home page. The most common call to actions at this point are things like; contact us now, book now, check out our 50% sale department, click here.

4. A Short Introduction

Don’t drivel on about yourself. Give people a little bit of information about you and your business. Tell them why they should choose you. Maybe show off a recent award or certification.

5. Your Services and Products

Let them see all the services you offer and make sure they are clickable and takes them to that service or product. You might want to provide a very brief description under each service but don’t go mad. Only give them enough information to make them want to find out more. 

6. Testimonials

People like to know what other people think of you. If you have reviews you can write them here but ensure you have a link to the real recommendation online, where possible. If they cannot find the real testimonial or review, they will believe it is fake and you will lose credibility and trust.

Put links to your Google my Business reviews or Facebook Recommendations to provide authenticity (link them to open in a new tab so they can easily navigate back to your website). Some sites, such as Trip Advisor, allow you to put a code on your website, which displays their reviews directly on your website.

7. Footer

Your footer is basically your contact page in brief. You should put your contact details such as name, phone and email (or contact form link), your business address, opening times and links to your social media. Although you might want people to look through your website, sometimes all they want is your contact details, so if it’s there on the first page, then they will thank you. Some even put their contact details in the header of their website so it appears straight away.

So that’s what we think you should have (or at least have) on the homepage of your website.

Do you know what other pages you need on your website? Read our must have pages for a website.

Think we’ve missed something? Let us know in the comments.

The Marketing Shack is a marketing company that specialises in online marketing. The information provided is correct on the date of publishing.

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