First Impression- The Skeletal architecture of a Perfect Home Page for website

First Impression- The Skeletal architecture of a Perfect Home Page for website

The homepage is often the first impression your website visitors will see of your brand.

It may likely be one of the most, if not the most, important pages on your site!

Imagine your homepage as a storefront. You’ll need to help welcome your users and guide them to the right place.

In this article, we’re going to share some of our best practices for writing an effective homepage that gets you more sales!

Let’s get started!

What Is A Homepage?

The homepage is the root page of your website and is often the most trafficked page on your site.

The purpose of the homepage is to introduce your brand, showcase your unique products or services, build trust, and help new visitors navigate.

So how do you write an effective homepage that accomplishes these goals?

Home Page Copywriting Template

Here are the sections you’ll want to include when writing a home page:

  1. Opening Headline & Subhead
  2. Products & Services
  3. Call Outs
  4. About Us
  5. Social Proof
  6. CTA

We’re going to go through each of these elements step-by-step to help you build an effective homepage.

1. Craft the Perfect Headline

Homepages take a 30,000-foot view of your business and a headline is the first thing visitors will see.

You’ll want to create a headline that’s engaging and clearly shows users they are in the right place.

The headline should exemplify your unique selling proposition (USP) and answer the question “what does your company do?”

Below this heading is a subhead that expands upon the main headline.

Once you’ve hooked visitors with your heading and subhead, you want to include a call-to-action or CTA at the bottom of the subhead so they can take immediate action.

Use clear phrases for the CTA like “call us now” or “sign up today.”

Some people may want to read more of your homepage and get additional information before progressing further. That’s ok. You’ll add other CTAs near the bottom to catch them later.

2. Show off Your Products & Services

Next, you’ll dive straight into what you’re selling. There’s no reason to make the customers wait.

What are the main products or services you offer? When customers are browsing your homepage, make sure they can easily identify what they’re looking for and navigate to that page specifically.

The key here is making sure your descriptions are clear and direct, and that links take a potential customer to the right sales page. Remember, homepages simply direct traffic.

Start with a heading that introduces the products or services.

Then, underneath that main heading, start listing your products or services. Include a brief description of each product or service and don’t forget a CTA to navigate to the page.

Repeat these sections and CTAs as much as needed to list the categories of things you sell. Each of these products or services will also need a separate sales page, but more about that later.

This section is all about helping your visitors understand what you offer and navigate to the solution for them.

3. Highlight Your Brand With ‘Call Outs’

After listing your company’s products or services, it’s a good time to fill them in on any other key aspects of your brand. These are known as “call-outs.”

The can include:

  • Unique benefits you offer
  • A Guarnatee
  • Different customers you serve
  • Office locations, or areas served

Include a section title, name the feature or benefit, and provide a brief explanation.

Rival companies offer the same products, but it’s the added benefits or features that can attract more clients to you. Show visitors that you’re their best choice.

4. Build Customer Trust With an ‘About Us’ Section

Including a brief section about your company can be a good way to bond with new visitors and gain trust.

Now remember, the customer cares about themselves and their problems, not you. Don’t make the mistake of talking too much about yourself. But adding this for context can increase trust as they can see who is behind the products and services they are interested in buying.

“About Us” sections can touch on who you are, what you stand for, and why they should pick you over your competitors.

Let a visitor know you’re all in this together. Don’t forget, most purchasing behavior is driven by the way customers feel – is there some way that you can connect with them?

Write your section title and include subheads if needed. Your description should share everything you’d like a potential customer to know. Most “About Us” sections are a short paragraph.

And finally, add a CTA if applicable. It’s not a requirement for this section, especially if the CTA doesn’t fit the situation. Some businesses with a longer story to tell create a separate “About Us” page linked from home.

5. Build Trust With Social Proof

In the world of online reviews like Yelp, Google, Angie’s List, or social media ratings, people love to read testimonials from real people.

Potential customers will likely Google your business and read as many reviews as they can before purchasing your products or services. Over 90% of shoppers read reviews and 84% of them trust these online reviews as much as if a friend told them about it.

One easy thing you can do to establish trust is to put testimonials, social proof, or snippets on your homepage so they don’t have to look far.

You can put testimonials in italics, shaded boxes, and include photographs if they agree to it. Formatting is really up to you and your web designer.

Here’s an example:

As you can see, we included thumbnail pictures of each person giving a testimonial. Our marketing team even circled back and shot videos of them bragging about us.

Include whatever you think is appropriate and what your marketing team can realistically handle. The point here is to show potential customers that other people were very satisfied with your business.

6. Finish With A Strong Call To Action

Some customers will click on your first CTA under the main heading. Others will want to skim through the rest of your homepage before making a decision.

For that second group of people, you want to include a final CTA. It needs to be clear and laser-focused on only one action. Don’t tell them to do a bunch of things.

Check out the final CTA we use on our best-selling HOTH X product:

We kept this CTA so basic there’s no confusion as to what our prospective clients should do next.

They have studied our entire homepage and, if still interested in our services, will follow this link to sign up for HOTH X in their account.

SEO Considerations For Your Homepage

One problem that customers often encounter is what keyword should you rank your homepage for?

This can be a problem since you probably offer multiple products and services – and your homepage should only be optimized for 1 main key phrase.

So what should you do instead?

We actually recommend that you don’t focus on ranking your home page.

Use your homepage for your brand, and then build separate sales pages for each of the products / services you want to rank for.

Read more about homepage SEO here.

Breathe Some New Life Into Your Homepage

By following these tips, you’ll create a stellar homepage that welcomes users correctly, establishes trust, and helps them navigate to where they need to go.

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