In today’s global marketplace, every business needs a website. There is however, a right way and a wrong way to design your home page. One of the most common problems we see is that business owners feel that they have to present every single aspect of their business, right on their home page.
This is not necessary and, in fact, can do more harm than good. So to help you design your home page, here are seven good practices that you can implement today:
- Avoid clutter: This is one of the most important factors to creating a good first impression on your home page. Only include what is necessary and leave sufficient white space to make your site look professional and uncluttered.
- Contact details: Add your contact details – physical address, phone number and link to the contact page in the header or sidebar. If you rely heavily on customers visiting your store, you can even include a Google map on your home page.
- User-friendly menu: Make sure you understand how visitors will want to make their way through your website and ensure that the primary menu is clearly visible and logically structured.
- Clear calls-to-action: If you want visitors to subscribe to your email list, contact you, or purchase a product, then add a clear call-to-action on the home page. Many business owners seem to forget to add a call-to-action on their home page, but something simple such as “View our weekly specials” generally works well.
- Images: If appropriate for your business (and for most, it is), images always help to engage visitors. So add a few images of your products on your home page, ones that will encourage visitors to investigate your site further. Images of people also tend to grab attention and have been shown to increase visitor engagement.
- Email subscriber box: Collecting visitors’ email addresses is always a good idea, because you have the contact details of a targeted audience ready and waiting for your next campaign. So add a subscription box to the sidebar and offer them a fee ‘how-to’ PDF or a regular newsletter if they subscribe.
- Social media links: Adding prominent social media buttons to your home page encourages visitors to share your content. This increases your audience and can lead to increased traffic and conversions.
The take home message is that your home page should not showcase everything you do. For more information on website design in Brisbane, call GO Creative on (07) 3333 2932 or request a free quote online.
