Driving bucket-loads of traffic to your website is all well and good. But it means very little if it doesn’t convert into leads and sales!
Thankfully, improving your website home page conversion rate (CR) is easier than many people think. For instance, adding a simple video to a landing page has been shown to boost conversions by as much as 80%. That staggering stat highlights the positive impact that a few simple tweaks and changes can make.
This is good news all-around, of course, but it’s particularly positive when it comes to your website home page. After all, generating home page conversions is notoriously difficult. The vast majority of first-time visitors to a website never come close to converting!
Unless that is, you design and optimize it with conversion principles in mind. Want to learn more about doing exactly that? Keep reading to discover how to design a high-converting home page.
Add a Video
As that statistic in the intro shows, including a video on the homepage can make a major difference to CR success. Given the popularity of video content these days, it’s really no surprise either.
People love watching videos for a host of reasons, but partly because it’s easier to consume than reading copy! As visual creatures, it helps us learn, captivates our attention, and elicits emotion. All of those attributes incentivize action.
Create an attractive, well-produced video that explains your business, its USP, and so on. Popping it on your homepage will convince users to stick around, learn about your operation, and convince them to convert as a result.
Include a Call to Action (CTA)
Every website designer and marketer worth their salt understand the importance of CTAs. This is where you tell a user what you’d like them to do! Like sheepdogs to sheep, the CTA funnels users down the path you want them to go.
Leave them out and you’ll never achieve the CR you deserve.
However, there’s one more thing to add in relation to your homepage: rather than including multiple CTAs throughout the page, try to incorporate just one.
Decide what you want people to do, then place a relevant CTA front and center of the screen. It should be large, simple, clear, and easy to understand. You’ll enjoy better results in the process.
Keep It Simple
Simplicity’s a central component of good website home page design. Far from being stuffed full of elements and text, the pages are full of white space! Why?
Because it offers both aesthetic and practical advantages.
In terms of appearance, the site looks sleek, modern, and attractive. From a practical standpoint, users can navigate around without getting confused or distracted. They’re guided around the page and to the key elements with greater ease, which facilitates engagement (and conversions).
Keep that in mind when designing your homepage. Creative websites with stripped back, minimalistic homepages will always convert better than busy ones.
Keep It Short
Long homepages were all the rage in the past. Webmasters would cram them full of every last bit of detail and content they could.
They were trying to prove their point and demonstrate their expertise. Furthermore, they recognized the success of long-form blog content (which ranks higher on SERPS and converts better too) and wanted to emulate it on the homepage.
But simplicity’s key, right? All those graphs, tables, images, and articles might look great to you. Yet there’s a good chance the users who arrive on your site won’t care!
Remember, people who land on your home page aren’t looking for the same level of detail they want in a blog post. With limited attention spans, shorter, sweeter, and more succinct homepages are the order of the day.
Don’t Underestimate the Headline
Your homepage’s headline is crucial to conversions too. This is your primary opportunity to grab peoples’ attention. It should tell them how you can help and explain why coming to your website was such a good decision.
In other words, the headline is your opportunity to communicate your value proposition. Done well, you’ll catch their eye, get them on board, and convince them to stick around. You can expect the CR goes up in the process.
Think about your audience and the primary problem that your product/service is designed to solve. Express how you can help in a few short, snappy words, and you’ll be onto a winner.
Test and Iterate
Think about your latest marketing campaign. What did you do after you’d set it up and sent it out into the world? There’s a good chance that you checked the results and updated the ad to test a new version of it.
In other words, you didn’t assume the original design was the best it could possibly be. Instead, you conducted A/B testing and iterated to see if anything could be improved upon. By analyzing the data and altering course accordingly, you ended up with a fully optimized ad with a higher rate of conversion.
Take the same tack with your website homepage! Run tests to see what works and what doesn’t; make changes based on the data. Experiment, analyze, and iterate, and your CR will soon improve.
Time to Design a Website Home Page That Converts
Boosting the conversion rate of your website home page can make a mighty difference to any business. All of a sudden, you’re using it to drive leads and sales instead of just showcasing your brand!
Sadly, though, it’s one area where many webmasters struggle. They may generate huge amounts of traffic, but, for one reason or another, fail to convert it into tangible positive outcomes.
Thankfully, increasing CR doesn’t have to be difficult. With any luck, the design tips in this post will help you do it! Keep them in mind and you’ll be on your way to a higher homepage CR in no time.
Want to read more posts like this one on website home page design? Check out the ‘Marketing’ section of the website now for more web design and online business hacks.
