What Makes a Good Homepage?

Your business website’s homepage is like a digital storefront for your business. Visitors should be able to gather your most important information before going inside. In fact, this information often influences their decision as to whether or not to proceed further. While there are many tools for building a business website and enhancing it with visuals, the content of your website ultimately boils down to you. In this post we’ll provide some helpful tips so that you can write homepage content that invites visitors to take a step inside.

Characteristics of a Good Homepage

To write proper content, you must first understand the characteristics of a good homepage. This will help you to write in accordance with your visitors’ expectations. A well written homepage:

Validates

Whether your visitors come from a search engine, social media, email, or elsewhere, their arrival should feel the same: secure and welcome. What you write in your homepage should immediately validate that they are in the right place and will be able to find what they are searching for.

Informs

The second priority of your homepage is to inform the visitor. Do not go into details about any one product, specialization, or feature. Write so that your homepage quickly supplies visitors with a snapshot of your business: your products/services, your general feel, and what’s in it for them. Think of your homepage as a sort of “shell” for your business, that also equips visitors to fill in the rest according to what is important to them.

Guides

You don’t actually want visitors staying on your homepage. Once your homepage validates and informs, it should then send visitors to other pages of your website so that they can learn about your business, engage with it, and even convert into leads or customers. Identify the key actions you want users to make, then make sure your homepage content directs them toward those actions. Visitors don’t want to have to figure out what to do, they want to know what they can do, and then be guided through it.

Writing Content for Your Homepage

So how do you use your homepage to validate, inform, and direct? Below is a list of essential elements for your homepage, and some tips on how to write effective content for them.

Navigation Menu

Your navigation menu is not the place to show your personality with alternative terms or your expertise with industry jargon. Use clear and simple writing to convey only the major components of your website. These typically include About Us, Products/Services, Contact Us, and Resources.

Related: The 5 Step Guide to Writing Killer Website Content

Introduction

Even if you have an “About Us” page, it is okay to include a brief introduction to your business in your homepage. In fact, it is best to keep your introduction very brief, and then go into more detail in the “About Us” page. When writing your introduction, address the core problems that you solve for customers. write less about “us” and “our” and more about “you” and “your”. Keep it less than 250 words.

Contact Information

While you have a Contact page, you should still write your contact information in your homepage. Also, write in your hours of operation! Hours are particularly important to customers, and can impact their next step with relation to your business. Don’t send them searching for that information.

Call to Action

As mentioned above, your homepage should be written in a way to guide visitors on your site. This incorporates the wording in your navigation and descriptions, as well as distinct call to actions. Include at least one effective call to action on your homepage that stands out and encourages a more direct engagement with your business, such as scheduling a free consultation, requesting a demo, or downloading a free piece of content.

When writing for your homepage, remember that it is the home base of your business website.  This will help you to welcome, inform, and then guide visitors to where they are looking to go.