You have a very short time to convince someone to stay on your website. A large study of online behaviour found that 55% spent less than 15 seconds on a website before moving on. So you don't even have 15 seconds to make a first impression.So what should you consider when it comes to the home page? In this post, we give 6 tips and advice on how to go about structuring and designing the main page of your website.
1. Tell the value of your offer
Before you say anything else, you need to explain what you are doing, or more importantly the value of what you are doing. Why is it relevant to the visitor? What are the benefits? How can your service or product help the visitor?Start the page with your USPs (Unique Selling Point) and explain what it is that makes your business special. The person visiting the page needs to feel that it's relevant to stay, so your mission is to tell them exactly why they should read on.
2. Show references
Whether you are in the B2C or B2B segment, you need to show some kind of reference or review. This can either be a review of your product or service, a quote from a really happy customer or a customer case study that shows how you work and the value it brought to the customer.Whatever the format and how you display the reference, it gives a strong and confident impression of your company and your brand. Showcasing who trusts you and why they do lowers the threshold for more people to take the plunge and dare to convert.
3. Mobile adaptation
For some time now, Google has been using Mobile First indexing. In short, this means that the search engine first looks at the mobile version of your website and then the desktop adaptation. The reason is simply that the majority of searches made through Google are made on a mobile device.
Even if you see that your visitors mainly use a computer when they visit your website, search engines assume that it is mobile-friendly. This means you can't get away with a responsive site that needs to perform well on computers, mobiles and tablets if you want to rank highly with search engines. So make sure your web design is user-friendly and compatible with all different types of devices.
4. Navigating
There are few things as frustrating as not finding what you're looking for. Simple and clear navigation is therefore essential when it comes to the user experience on your website. If your visitors can't find the information they're looking for, they'll quickly leave the site and visit a competitor. This in turn will be detected by search engines, which will negatively impact your SEO.With an easy-to-navigate website, you increase the chances that your target audience will find the information they are looking for and you also ensure a positive user experience. This not only builds trust in your business but also increases the chances that your target audience will actually convert.What visitors are most often looking for is:
- What you offer and why it is relevant to them
- Contact information for you
- Information about your company
- Case or references
- Links to social media or a blog where they can delve deeper into the topic and find even more information
A tip for navigation is that the visitor should be able to find the information they are looking for in a maximum of 3 clicks. So make sure the menu is clear and that the links tell you exactly where the visitor will end up.
5. Showcase your latest blog posts
Yes, it makes sense to do this on the home page.The home page is usually the first thing a visitor sees and should inspire them to stay and read further. Showcasing relevant news and keeping the homepage updated with new content is therefore a trick to not only attract new visitors but also keep the interest of someone clicking through to the homepage for the third, fourth or fifth time.
If you can get someone to click through and read a blog post instead of leaving the page, you increase the time visitors stay on the page and reduce your bounce rate, which builds domain authority. Something that boosts your website's SEO. Looking at the benefits from a user perspective, conversions also increase in the long run as your visitors find relevant and engaging information that appeals to them. They then build trust in your company and the chances increase that they will eventually convert.Another tip is to mix blog posts with videos. Moving content is a great way to engage your audience. Read more about how to get started with video marketing here.
6. CTAs
Call-to-actions (CTAs) are extremely important for successfully converting your visitors into actual customers. It is equally important on both the landing pages and the home page that you have CTAs that lead the visitor onwards and facilitate conversion, and make sure you have CTAs scattered throughout the page. Not everyone will scroll to the bottom of the page and not everyone will scroll back to look for a CTA. You can therefore add a conversion point in the middle of the page and one at the end. The placement simply depends on what you're writing about, but don't be afraid to include multiple CTAs on each page.A conversion doesn't necessarily mean a purchase; it could just as easily be that they fill out a contact form with a question, download a guide or book a demo. The goal is to get more information about who is visiting your website and be able to screen out those who are interested enough that you should focus sales efforts on that particular individual.By knowing how they converted, for example if they downloaded the complete guide to hiking boots, you know what product to talk about when you contact the visitor.
Summary
6 tips and advice on how to go about structuring and designing the main page of your website are:
- Tell the value of your offer
- Show references
- Ensure mobile adaptation
- Have simple and clear navigation
- Showcase your latest blog posts
- Remember CTAs
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