A homepage has one job. Tell a stranger what you do, prove that you can do it, and give them somewhere to go next. Almost everything else is decoration.
Four elements do that work.
- A clear promise. What you do and who it is for, in the first sentence they read. Not a slogan, a sentence. If a visitor cannot tell within a few seconds whether they are in the right place, they leave, and everything below that point is wasted.
- One image that means something. The picture at the top is doing the same job as the headline. A photo of the actual work beats a stock photo of a handshake, every time.
- Proof from someone who is not you. A review, a client name, a case. People believe other customers before they believe your copy. BrightLocal's research puts the average buyer at ten reviews read before they trust a business.
- One obvious next step. A button that says what happens when you press it. "Plan a call" beats "Learn more", because one of them tells you what you are getting.
Where homepages usually go wrong
Not by missing an element. By having all four and burying them: the promise below a slider, the proof three screens down, the button competing with six other buttons.
Order matters as much as presence. Promise, image, proof, action, in that order, above and just below the fold.
The test
Show your homepage to someone who has never heard of your company. Give them five seconds, then take it away and ask what you do and what they would click.
If they cannot answer both, the problem is not traffic.
We rebuild homepages for a fixed price, and that test is the first thing we run.
Builds websites and the systems behind them for small businesses in Spain and the Netherlands. Writes down the things clients ask twice.
