3 Features Your Website Homepage Should Have
When you run a business, the usability of your website is vital to encourage conversions, which in turn leads to revenue. This is where your website’s homepage gains its importance, because when a user gets disappointed with the design, layout, navigation, and/or any other feature of your website and homepage, they are most likely to leave, causing you to lose a potential customer.
In any business website, your homepage is the most important tool that creates a lasting first impression on potential customers. Within just a matter of few seconds, your homepage must be able to introduce your products or services to visitors and persuade them to further explore your website. Therefore, in addition to making your website user-friendly, you should also focus on finding the right features to have on your homepage that will appeal to visitors.
Following are three features your homepage should have:
Headline or Tagline
The most important element on your website is the homepage call to action or navigation. If you don’t have this feature on your homepage, you will be making things hard for your visitors, letting them go and losing prospective customers. As soon as people visit your website, they should be told how your business can help them. They shouldn’t be required to click your About the Company or About Us page to know about the products or services you offer.
A proper headline on your website’s homepage should be short and clear, with a precise explanation of what you do. Remember to keep it simple and not too fancy or complicated. Also, this should be the biggest text on your website’s landing page. Here are some points to remember:
- No visitor to your website should have to put in extra effort to know what you have to offer. You tell them.
- Try and use headlines that are more compelling. For instance, a question like “Why should I choose you?” is something self-serving.
- Remember to make sure that your headline offers continuity to the original message and channel that brought in visitors. This could be a social media promotion, search engine optimization, or any other means with specific keywords. Make sure that those words are repeated in your tagline.
Call to Action
When a person visits your website, regardless of what page they are on, especially your homepage, you must interest and prompt them on what to do next. Having one or more calls to action (CTA) is an excellent way to get visitors to visit the interior pages of your website, start with your selling process, or even to begin direct contact. Your call to action should be visually prominent. Here are a few techniques to come up with CTAs that are more effective:
- Use action words to make your CTAs read like a command.
- For better results, use first person voice, like “Take me there”, etc.
- When it comes to the design of your CTAs, keep in mind that this is an important feature to improve your conversion rates, and therefore, experiment with different shapes, colors, placements, etc. before finalizing.
Social Media
Having people engage with and follow your company on social media platforms is another key aspect that contributes to the success of a business. Therefore, remember to include links to your social media pages, represented by icons or buttons, on your homepage, where your site visitors can find the same easily. Even if not on the header or sidebar, do include them in your website’s footer. This is an easy way to give your potential clients or customers an option to know more about you before hiring you or opting for your products or services.
These are just three of the essential features your homepage should have. You can, of course, include a lot more; but, it is important that you choose only those that help you lead your visitors where you want them to go.
