5 Tips to Optimise your Homepage
Picture this…Your SEO strategy is out of this world. Your marketing plan is right on point. People are learning about your business and product(s). They are streaming into your website, and finally, that feeling of success is starting to dawn on you. The leads are finally coming! All that time spent strategising and planning as you burn the midnight oil is eventually paying off.
With traffic now getting to your website, are you certain the homepage layout and content is adequate enough to keep that traffic engaged? Is it enough to result to conversion?
When potential customers visit your website, the homepage is likely the first thing they see. Of course, there are other ways for them to scratch beneath the surface of the site, but the homepage is likely to be the gateway. You need to have particular elements on the page to serve as a guide to visitors on where you need them to go because of the number of views that one page will receive.
Repeating an old cliché, first impressions do indeed matter, more so when it is about the most common thing potential customers will see on your website. A good homepage, it has been established, can result to many sales, so paying every component some thought is a good idea.
The Headline
The headline is what you would call the title of your website. And most likely, it’s the first thing anyone visiting your site will see. A typical headline consists of six to twelve words at the max which doesn’t seem much, right?
The headline though, remains one of the most important components of your homepage so much so that one study by Kissmetrics found a good headline to increase conversion rates by as much as 10.4 percent.
Granted, how do you come up with the perfect headline? Talking about it and blogging about the subject-matter may have led you to believe it’s no mean task. Quite on the contrary though. One thing you need to bear in mind is that writing for your entire audience is impossible to pull off. Rather, focus on writing for the 20 to 30 percent of visitors most likely to make a purchase after paying your website a visit.
Come up with a couple of different headlines, as many as you feel you need to jumpstart your creative motors. Leave the ideas as they are at this point. At times you can take parts from different ideas and bring them together to form the perfect headline.
Don’t forget your headline needs to answer the question, ‘What does this website offer me?’, just a few seconds of visiting the website.
Benefits
A great headline can pull in leads, but it can’t stick without revealing the benefits of your product or service. It’s a good idea to list what your product or service does, but what else the potential customers will be interested in knowing is how it matters to them.
Additionally, they will want to know why they should opt for your product or service as opposed to the competition’s. List your benefits in a clear manner, and let your customers know why they need your offering.
Read more tips on optimising your homepage on page 2
5 Tips to Optimise Your Homepage
Calls to Action
It can be irritating to know that after all is said, there isn’t a simple and obvious way to do something about it. We’ve all stumbled upon a site that makes it their job to ‘hide’ a phone number or even order a product, the one reason they are there in the first place.
A call to action is an element present on a webpage that elicits the user to take some sort of action, the most popular form coming in the shape of a clickable button that redirects customers to the intended parts of the website where they can accomplish a desired goal.
Color, size, and placement all matter when it comes to call-to-action buttons. Make it visible and easy for everyone.
Images
An image is worth a thousand words they say, and it is upon this basis that we include images as one of the top ways to optimise your homepage.
Include images that rhyme with your product and your offering. Take time to consider what images to include, because the generic-looking business people aren’t good enough.
Clean Design
Ensure your homepage is pleasant to look at. You can include everything we’ve discussed above and still not cut it if your homepage evokes memories of the last century rather than a modern, professional company.
A clean easy-to-navigate homepage is as important as top-notch content.
Take some time to map out how you want your homepage to look and feel. If it’s something you would rather not spend time on, chances are others might just share the same sentiments.