Home sweet home page
What makes a successful home page design? More than anything else, it’s FOCUS. The goal of your home page is to quickly qualify you as a product or service provider in your industry and give your visitors a clear call to action that shows them where they need to go next… Get more information, sign up, order, etc. The home page is also a good place to separate different types of visitors. A products company, for example, may need to separate consumers from retailers and present custom-tailored information for each or a services company may need to separate current from prospective clients.
I usually recommend that before considering home page content that a company decide what they really want to achieve with their web site. What is it supposed to do? Provide information? Develop credibility? Build a mailing list? Generate online sales? Some business owners may say “all of the above.” That is not the right answer. In any business endeavor there is always one goal that is more important than all others. If your business sells a product and intends to sell it online, that product should be front and center on your home page. If you’re a service provider, it probably needs to be your value proposition along with some call to action that leads your visitor significantly closer to contacting you.
From there, set the rest of your priorities and be prepared to demote some of them to lower pages in your web site. If your home page works, visitors will ultimately make their way to that content… If you overwhelm visitors, you’ll likely lose them right away.
Of all the mistakes that business owners tend to make on their home pages, I see two time and time again… The first mistake is overload. Businesses can’t tell their whole stories on one web page any more than they can on one sheet of paper or one PowerPoint slide. Start with what’s important and use your second-level pages to support your claims.
The second mistake is — for lack of a better word — vanity. Videos, cool flash demos, photos of the business owners or recent company events can all have their place in a web site. But that place may not be on the home page. It is extremely important to have a web site that you, as a business owner, like and appreciate. But although you may own your web site, it isn’t FOR you, it’s for your customers and your home page needs to tell a story that will be meaningful to them. No matter how much you spent on that video and how much you like it, the video may not be a replacement for a good product shot and tagline. No matter how much of your personality is wrapped up in your business, a photo of you may not adequately describe your firm’s value proposition. Please note though that these aren’t absolutes (i.e., never put a video on your home page), just examples of common home page pitfalls…
Not sure what belongs on your home page and what doesn’t? The best advice I can give is to speak frankly to your marketing/web folks and ask them how they would approach it… As business owners there is only so much that we can do ourselves. And marketing decisions can be especially sticky as many small business CEO’s feel compelled to drive their marketing themselves down to each written word and the layout of each piece of collateral. I’d advise you to find a good resource that you can lean on to help you make these types of decisions, just as you would lean on and trust a CPA, attorney or IT professional to help you make decisions as they relate to certain aspects of your business. Don’t know where to find one? Email me and I will be happy to point you to some good people.
Posted by E. Wolf
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