Three Keys to a Successful Homepage
Posted by Patrick Hopkins on Fri, Jun 22, 2012
Is your homepage helping or hindering your visitors? Are your bounce rates on this page through the roof? Chances are if you aren’t getting the results you expect from your website, your homepage is to blame.
Your homepage should have one main goal – making it easy for people to find what they want. Overly flashy homepages with videos, changing graphics, music and other big features might be impressive to your staff or your CEO, but visitors are looking for functionality and simplicity. In fact, ease of use was rated the #1 factor that website visitors are looking for on a web page, according to a survey by Hubspot.
Here are three keys that you can use to create a successful homepage on your website.
Limit Choices to Focus the Page – Website visitors don’t want to arrive at your website and make a bunch of decisions. They want to find exactly what they want in as few steps as possible. So what do your website visitors want? Take some time to create user personas for your site and consider the choices that each persona would make.
For example, if you’ve got a visitor that is at the start of the decision making process, they’ll want information and fast facts about your product or service. In contrast, someone who is already familiar with you and who is ready to make a purchase needs ordering information. You can make both type of visitors feel comfortable on your site with strategic homepage redesign.
Get Involved Socially – These days having a social media presence is an absolute must. Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools are essential for interacting with new prospects and making your mark in your industry. Display your links to your social media profiles on your homepage so website visitors can connect instantly. Someone may not be ready for your product or service right away, but if they connect with you on social media they may be more likely to buy from you in the future.
Redirect Your Pages – Although this homepage improvement isn’t visible to the naked eye, it’s essential if you want a good functioning website. A 301 redirect is a piece of code that transfers traffic going from one domain to another domain. This effects your homepage directly when you or your web developer set one up for the http:// version of your website. This version of your homepage should redirect to the http://www version of your site. Without this coding you’ll technically have two versions of your website out there competing for rankings. This can affect your ability to rank well for your keyword terms.
Your homepage is the face of your services or products. You only get one chance to impress that visitor, so make sure you carefully place the essentials you want them to know on your homepage. It should also act as a launching platform to places where they can contact you in the future through your blog and social media. With these three keys you can be sure that you have a homepage that works – and works well.