Your website is extremely important to all of your company’s marketing activities, and your homepage is your website’s first impression. As the saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Your homepage needs to be user friendly and be the kind of online resource that your visitors will want to visit over and over again.
Loading Time
The longer it takes your homepage to load, the more likely your traffic will bounce to another website. When we are talking about loading time, we are talking about tenths of a second. Your homepage needs to be designed to load quickly, and it needs to grab your visitor’s attention right away.
Avoid The “Annoying Factor”
Contrary to popular belief, Internet users do not enjoy homepages that have audio or video that starts automatically. This is something called the annoying factor, and you need to keep your annoying factor very low if you want repeat traffic to your homepage. Avoid pop-up windows, large advertisements, and videos that start automatically to make your homepage appealing to all audiences.
Simple Design
While you will occasionally get the visitor who likes to look at a homepage and figure out what it is supposed to be saying, those kinds of visitors are few and far between. Your homepage needs to have a simple but appealing design that tells your traffic immediately what your company and website are all about.
Clear Navigation
The three-click rule states that if a visitor to your website has to click more than three times to find what they want on your site, then they will go to a different website. You need a simple but effective navigation system for your website, and you need to have an easily accessible site map to give your visitors everything they need to find what they are looking for.
Effective Images
Your images should take up as little disc space as possible to allow for fast loading, and they should all help benefit your company’s brand. Images and videos are becoming very important for websites, but you need to make sure that all of the images on your website explain what your company does and entice your visitors to want to learn more about your company.
More Videos
Just because visitors to your homepage do not want to see videos that start automatically does not mean that they do not want videos at all. Your homepage is a great place to put a company promotional video, or a couple of video testimonials from satisfied customers. While you want your homepage to be as clean as possible, you do want to include as much information as you can that will entice your visitors to want to learn more.
A good homepage is going to make a big difference in how well your website converts traffic into paying customers. By putting together an effective homepage, you will attract more traffic and convince repeat traffic to come back more often. Hire a good digital marketing agency to make sure that your homepage is as effective and appealing as possible.