There are many different components of a great website, but perhaps the most important is your homepage. For almost all websites, the homepage will be the most common landing page, so it’s essential that it’s optimized in terms of design, development, and copy. Here are 6 factors that every great landing page should have.
Quick
One of the biggest reasons for users bouncing from a website is slow load speeds. While it can be tempting to pack your homepage full of eye-catching assets and imagery, it’s also important to find the right balance between content and speed. After all, it’s pointless having an all singing and dancing homepage if your users lose patience waiting for it to load.
There are a number of things you can do to reduce the load speed of a website or page, including:
- Compressing images
- Removing unnecessary code
- Choosing a faster web host
Engaging Design
Although filling your homepage with assets has the potential to slow down your website, it’s also important that your homepage engages users with aesthetically pleasing design, especially those visiting your website for the first time.
This could come in the form of a sleek user interface or an attention-grabbing video. Either way, you want your homepage to be memorable, and design plays a big part in this. However, you’ll also need to combine attractive design with the other factors listed in this article.
Clear Copy
Something you’ll need to combine with the design of your website is powerful copy. What constitutes powerful copy will differ from one homepage to the next, so it’s important to work out what your potential users want to read on your website.
Regardless of the purpose of your website, the homepage copy should clearly outline what your website does. Remember, the homepage is where most new users begin their journey with you, so the page should clearly explain itself.
The majority of websites are ecommerce sites, which means they are selling something to users. If this applies to your website, it’s important that the homepage copy is emotional as well as clear. There’s an old copywriting rule that suggests sales copy should sell the benefits, not the features of a product, which is worth remembering when crafting your homepage copy.
Optimised For Search Engines
While the focus of your copy may be to convert users, you’ll also need to consider search engine algorithms and SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation. SEO simply refers to making websites and content more search engine friendly, to increase the online visibility of your website.
There are various ways to optimise content for websites and content for SEO, which can be divided into on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. On-page SEO refers to optimising content in terms of layout and keywords. Off-page is about building the authority of your website, which is heavily dependent on the quantity and quality of websites linking to your website. Technical SEO is perhaps the most complex and relates to improving the performance of your website.
This is a specialised area, and it’s one that you may need to get assistance with in the form of an SEO agency.
User Friendly
The above factors become slightly redundant if users can’t use your website easily. This is what we refer to as user experience (UX), and it has become a crucial consideration in recent years. UX covers a range of areas, but a site with good UX will ultimately allow users to browse smoothly and find what they are looking for quickly.
The UX of a homepage is particularly important for large ecommerce websites that have a range of collections. If your website can’t take users to what they’re looking for, there’s a good chance they’ll go to one of your competitors, causing you to lose sales.
Final Thoughts
When designing a homepage for your website, it’s important to factor in other considerations such as your industry, your audience, and your website’s purpose. For instance, a startup fashion website may prioritize SEO to build up brand awareness. A charity may focus on emotional copywriting to persuade visitors to donate to their cause. Great homepages can come in all shapes and sizes, but using the five factors above as a checklist is a great starting point.