14 Key elements of a good website home page
In this post, we will cover the essential elements your website (home page) or landing page needs to have in order to drive more conversions.
For any digital business, whether it’s the largest online store like Amazon or a lifestyle blog, the primary interface between the company and users/customers is its website.
The entire customer acquisition process starts when the customer discovers your website through a Google search, a mention on social media, or a reference from another website.
Once a prospect lands on your website, you have to either retain them, get them to buy something from you, or do anything that generates revenue for your business.
The home page serves as the face of the business and is crucial in establishing trust and credibility with users. The home page (or landing page) informs the prospect what your site is about and what value it can provide.
If you are not able to convince users to stay and learn more or take the next action, users will start to bounce off and look elsewhere.
In this post, we are going to discuss the absolute essentials your site needs to have based on researching the top websites.
Metrics to measure a successful website?
Once visitors come to your site, you want them to stick around and engage with your content. Measuring engagement can be tricky, but some important metrics to look at include time on site, pages per visit, and bounce rate.
- Bounce Rate – This measures the percentage of visitors who leave your site after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that your website is not relevant to what users are looking for, or that your content is not engaging.
- Time on Site – This measures the average amount of time that visitors spend on your website. A longer time on site can indicate that visitors are engaged with your content.
- Pages per Visit – This measures the average number of pages that visitors view during a single visit to your website. A higher number of pages per visit can indicate that users are finding your content interesting and informative.
We are looking for a low bounce rate, a longer time on site, and multiple pages per visit. So, now let’s look at the elements you need to improve on to improve these metrics.
Key elements you need to have on your Home page or landing page
There are a few key areas to focus on when trying to determine if your website is successful:
Layout and design
The layout and design of your home page will play a big role in determining whether visitors stay on your site or leave.
The overall look & feel of the home page should be designed in a way that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for. The layout should be simple and organized, and the design should be clean and professional.
You need to have consistent use of colors, fonts, spaces, shapes, and any other elements on the page.
Good Copywriting
The content on your home page is also important. The content on your home page should be well-written and informative. It should be clear and concise, and it should give visitors a good idea of what your site is about. The text should be easy to understand.
People don’t care about your offering, they care about themselves. You need to craft the right message.
Make sure to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Heading
Does your landing page have a good heading that quickly tells the audience what your site is about? A good heading makes people aware of the problem, the solution to the problem, and the fact that you have it.
Having a powerful heading is probably the most important factor in copywriting. If the heading is not powerful and relatable enough, users might just leave.
Hero Image
The hero image is the first thing that a user will see when they visit your landing page. It should be high quality and relevant to the rest of the site’s content. Just like the heading, the hero image should be powerful, relevant, and relatable. A user, after looking at the heading and image should be able to figure out in a few seconds, what your company does.
Some people use a video instead of an image. A video is more interactive and also if used wisely, can bring more life to the site. However, if the video is of high quality and the user has a slow internet connection, the experience can be bad.
Speed
Website speed is important for a number of reasons. First, slow loading pages can frustrate and even anger visitors, causing them to leave your site without taking any action. This not only means lost potential customers but also lost revenue.
Second, fast-loading pages improve your search engine rankings. Google and other search engines consider page speed when determining where to rank your site in search results.
You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of your website and get recommendations for improving it.
Social Proof
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people conform to the actions of others in order to feel like they belong. In other words, it’s the tendency for people to do what everyone else is doing because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do.
On your website, social proof can take many forms, such as customer testimonials, reviews, media mentions, and social media followers.
The goal of social proof is to build trust and credibility with potential customers by showing them that other people have had positive experiences with your company.
If you don’t have any social proof on your website, it’s time to get some. Adding even a few testimonials or reviews can make a big difference in how potential customers perceive your business.
Call To Action
Your CTA (call-to-action) is what you want your audience to do after they’ve read your content. It could be anything from subscribing to your email list to buying a product.
Your CTA should be clear, concise, and actionable. It should also be relevant to the rest of your content. For example, if you’re writing a blog post about the benefits of meditation, your CTA might be to sign up for a meditation course.
Make sure your CTA stands out from the rest of your content so that readers know what they’re supposed to do next. You can use color, white space, and/or images to make your CTA more visible.
Trust & Security
Trust signals are elements on your website that show potential customers that you’re a credible and trustworthy business.
Some common trust signals include testimonials, reviews, security badges, partnerships with big brands, and media mentions.
Adding trust signals to your website can help increase conversions by making potential customers feel more comfortable doing business with you.
Value proposition
Your value proposition is a statement that explains what you do and why someone should care – basically the features & benefits you’re offering. It’s usually displayed prominently on your website so that visitors know what your business is all about.
Your value proposition should be clear, concise, and relevant to your target audience. It should also be unique to your business.
If you don’t have a value proposition on your website, now is the time to create one. A strong value proposition can be the difference between a website visitor becoming a customer and leaving your site without taking any action.
Your website’s navigation should be easy to use and understand. Visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for without any difficulty.
If your website has a lot of content, you might want to consider using a drop-down menu so that visitors can quickly access the information they’re looking for.
You should also use clear and concise labels for your navigation items. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that your audience might not be familiar with.
FAQ/Help section
A FAQ (frequently asked questions) or a Help section can be a valuable addition to your website, especially if you offer products or services that might require some explanation. Customers want to know that they will be able to ask questions and get help when required.
Your FAQ or Help section should answer common questions that your target audience might have. It should also be easy to find – visitors should be able to access it from any page on your website.
Including a FAQ or Help section on your website can help reduce the number of customer support requests you receive, freeing up time for you to focus on other areas of your business.
Contact Information
Your contact information should be easy to find and include all the relevant details, such as your email address, phone number, and physical address (if you have one).
You might also want to include a contact form on your website so that visitors can easily get in touch with you.
Making your contact information available on your website can help build trust with potential customers and make it easier for them to do business with you. Customers should know that there’s a real human behind the site.
Mobile-friendliness
Is your website easily accessible on smartphones? Will the user have a similar, if not better experience when they open your website on their mobile phone?
Mobile-friendliness is especially important since more and more people are using their phones and tablets to access the internet. More than 50% of people use their smartphones to access the internet.
You can use Google’s free Mobile-Friendly Test to see if your website is mobile-friendly.
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you should consider making some changes to ensure that users have a positive experience when they visit your site on their mobile devices.
Above-the-fold
Your website’s home page should have key content “above the fold” – meaning, visitors should be able to see it without scrolling down.
You want to state the most important things on the top of your site so that people can know immediately what you are offering and how it can help them.
Your above-the-fold content should include your value proposition, a photo or video, and a call-to-action (CTA). A CTA is a button or link that encourages visitors to take a specific action, such as signing up for your email list or making a purchase.
We covered the essential elements required for your key conversion page. However, there are other UI elements you need to A/B test and see what works better.
The best way to know what works is by looking at successful websites in your industry. Big companies spend a lot of time and money testing different elements on their website and optimizing user experience.
So instead of spending time tweaking, just follow your most successful competitors, and then you can try to further improve conversions through testing. Check out the post here to find a list of homepage examples of successful startups.
There are a few key elements that every home page should have in order to be effective. Do you have all the elements in place? Take our landing page assessment to find out how you score.
If you liked this post, do check out some of our other relevant posts.
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