• December 28, 2017
• on Website Design
• by TLj Creative Marketing

4 Must Haves To Include On Your Homepage

Your homepage is arguably the most important facet of your website.

It is where most of your traffic goes during the 1^st visit.

When optimizing your homepage, there are a lot of factors to consider. Those range from SEO efforts and content writing, to design and looks.

Today, we’ll focus on the design and looks aspect. And specifically, we’ll mention 4 things that must be on your homepage.

Adding those 4 things will create varying positive impacts on your branding. So it’s best if you add them into your web design plan!

(1) Images.

Most people are visual, and they hate reading words.

With a homepage, you want to minimize words as much as you can. Don’t make readers think. And don’t scare them with excess text.

It’s standard to add images to homepages. But the important question here is, what kind of images do you need?

Well, we see it best to add 1 illustrative image.

The illustrative image is a high resolution and quality image for your homepage. It is the main image that signals the brand of your website.

It’s usually placed at the top, or after a few scrolls towards the middle.

Your illustrative image must speak the purpose of your website. And preferably, you should hyperlink it to a sales or “price quotes” page.

You can get the image from a stock photo website. Some websites, such as Shutterstock or iStock, provide many size and resolution options.

You can also take a personal photo for your homepage (if your site is about you). For that, we recommend hiring a professional photographer, and planning the shot beforehand!

(2) Conspicuous Navigation.

Most website visitors land on your homepage. But what comes after that?

Your visitors will want to check out other pages. And you’ve got to make it easy for them to visit those.

This is where your navigation system comes in. Your homepage must contain a conspicuous navigation system.

It should be easy to access, and easy to use.

Preferably, you should have 2 forms of navigation…

• A Navigation Bar.
• A Search Box.

The 1^st one is a must. Your navigation bar should be visible at the top of your homepage. And in fact, you should try to make it a static element in all your pages.

If possible, make your navigation bars “dropdown.” This’ll let your visitors quickly see if their wanted page is in the category they scroll over.

Ultimately, this is more convenient to visitors.

From your navigation bar, your visitors should be led to 4 types of pages (minimum)…

• Blog.
• Contact Page.
• Products Pages.
• About Us.

As for the search box, it should be close to the navigation bar. This’ll either be in the body of the website, or in the header area.

Pick and choose the exact position, depending on your design plan!

(3) Social Proofs.

Whatever social media you’re on should have a minor representation on your home page.

It could be any form of social media. It could be Facebook and Twitter, or something visual like YouTube and Instagram.

But do note that here, you do not link social media for the sake of it. Instead, you want to leverage subscriber counts to impress visitors.

For example, if you’ve got a FB page with 50K likes, indicate that on your homepage. Show your visitors that you have a huge following out there that wants updates.

If that doesn’t entice new visitors into subscribing, then nothing will.

Usually, getting the job done requires you to install social media widgets. Those are little icons or boxes, showing the social media website logo, and your follow count.

We’re sure you’ve seen those on many other sites.

Social media widgets take up minimal space on any page. And for that reason, it’s easy to place them wherever you desire on your homepage.

They will not mess with your design plans at all.

(4) Product/Service Features.

So you’ve added in all the necessities. Yet, one thing remains…

This would be your list of features.

You want to immediately tell visitors what to expect when visiting your homepage. You want to indicate what your website is about, and what it offers.

For that, you must list features. And there are so many ways to do so.

For example, you may add boxes with mini-descriptions of what you provide in brief. Or you can provide a top-down list of all the advantages of your service.

Regardless of what you choose, ensure that you are clear and direct!

So is That All I Need?

Definitely not.

We simply listed the “must have” items. You can still add other things such as video tutorials or testimonials.

Regardless, make sure you meticulously plan your homepage design. This is not something you want to change often, especially if you’re heavy on marketing!

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Take a closer look at the Marketing Built For Success.

For assistance with website strategy or social media marketing, contact Tisha Littlejohn at 312 798 9332 or info@tljcreativemarketing.com.

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