Is a beautiful homepage design necessary to increase your website sales? Yes. Your website homepage gives visitors an overview of your business's trustworthiness and your products' quality. It plays an essential role in increasing your online sales by leading your potential customers to your e-commerce store and other web pages.
When it comes to homepage design, there are a lot of mistakes that fail its purpose. If you've started with the design of your homepage, check whether you've included any one of the things listed below.
- Irrelevant images
- Too much of everything
- Using whitespace poorly
- An awful call to action
- Not making the design mobile-friendly
- Hidden or cluttery navigation
Before we dig into the tips for how to create a homepage design that converts, let's look at its importance.
Importance of an Excellent Homepage Design
If your homepage design doesn't have a proper layout, is cluttery, or doesn't catch the visitor's eye, they might exit without a second thought. In worse cases, they may go to your competition's website.
Here are some more reasons why the design of your homepage needs to be appealing.
1. Educates Consumer About Your Brand
Content is not the only thing that educates prospective consumers about your brand values and image. The design communicates your brand's morals visually. The pictures, graphics, and colors you use convey information about your business.
Moreover, your homepage design elements tell consumers about the niche of your business. Each color has a meaning. For example, if your business's niche is nature-related, you can incorporate green colors in your design.
2. Shows the Value of Your Products
Your homepage design doesn't only generate leads but also determines the value of your product. For instance, have a look at Penny juice's homepage.
Image taken from Penny Juice
Now, consider Blended Natural’s homepage design. Ask yourself, who would you pay more for a juice box?
Image taken from Blended Naturals
3. Generates Leads
A good homepage design forms a good impression of your business in your audience's minds, leading them to purchase from your site. Visual hierarchy is essential in helping the customer decide whether to stay on the site or leave.
Hierarchy refers to designing your site's elements according to the attention they should get. For instance, you want people to notice your call-to-action button more than the brand's logo. Thus, you ask your designer to make it stand out. There are multiple ways of making an element stand out; one is using opposite colors. If your site's background color is light blue, your CTA button can be dark blue or black.
Tips for Making Your Homepage Design Impactful
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
If you're stuck and cannot think of creative homepage design ideas, consider looking at other people's designs. You can search for the websites of businesses similar to your niche and visit sites like Dribbble to get inspired.
Follow the tips below to create the best homepage design that converts first-time visitors into frequent buyers.
1. It Must Tell the User About Your Business at First Glance
One of the significant purposes of a homepage is to educate the user about your business and its benefits. Educating the user when they enter your site will help them determine whether your business can help them. If you fail to deliver the core message about your brand, the audience won't know if your business can be helpful and will leave in a few seconds.
You must keep the necessary information above the page fold to deliver your business's core message. Then, create a catchy headline that talks about your products and services. Ensure the headline doesn't blend in with other elements. Below the title, include a concise description of your business. It should be short but shouldn't leave out any crucial details about what your brand sells.
2. Make Navigation Easy
A navigation menu leads people to other important pages of your website, such as an online store, contact page, blog, etc. A navigation bar is also a way of telling more about your products or services. For instance, you own a clothing e-commerce store. Your navigation menu would display the links to your product pages of different categories, like, kids' clothing, accessories, men's apparel, winter stock, etc. This will tell your audience if you have the product they're looking for.
The second important thing about the navigation menu is choosing the right kind. There are two types of navigation menus:
- Vertical navigation
- Horizontal navigation
Which kind you should go for depends upon the layout and design of your homepage. Further, don't forget to attach a link to the logo on your homepage's navigation bar. This step creates a great user experience, enabling them to navigate to your home page no matter which page of your site they are.
Remember, the easier it is to navigate to other web pages of your site, the more chances of the visitors exploring it.
3. Don't Forget the Visual Hierarchy
Image taken from Strikingly
We've discussed the term visual hierarchy and its purpose above. Now let's look at the laws of visual hierarchy to make your homepage elements less or more prominent.
To make an element less prominent:
- Keep the size small.
- Place it at the bottom of the page.
- Color contrast should be low.
- The format should be text.
- Keep it surrounded by other elements.
To make an element stand out:
- The size must be significant.
- Place it at the top of the page.
- The color contrast must be strong. Preferably unique color.
- The format can be video, image, or moving element.
- Surround it with whitespace.
4. Include a Clear Call to Action
Calls to action are the most critical part of the homepage design because they encourage the visitor to engage with your website. They can be about subscribing to your newsletter, making a purchase, subscribing to your blog, etc.
Here are some strategies for making your calls to action impactful:
- List the benefits above the button the visitors will have when they complete the CTA task.
- Involve the words that evoke emotions.
- Benefit from FOMO. For instance, if the CTA button asks people to enroll for an online course and you have a few spots left, tell them you have a few spots left.
- Make it pop. Implement the laws of hierarchy to make your CTA noticeable.
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
5. Ensure the Design is Mobile-responsive
Today, more people browse websites from phones than desktops, making it necessary to create a design of your homepage mobile-friendly. Many designers nowadays take a mobile-first approach, then convert their design into desktop-friendly.
Your design must be suitable to view across all devices, from desktops to phones, because every device has a massive chunk of users you wouldn't want to miss.
A few ways you can create a mobile-friendly website design is by increasing the readability of your text, eliminating pop-ups, and keeping the links far apart.
6. Keep Your Design Clutter-free
Using whitespace correctly is one of the essential tips for creating the best homepage design. Surround your elements with whitespace (wherever needed), and don't try to include too much. If your design is cluttery, every aspect will try to grab the visitor's attention equally. This will confuse the visitor leading them to exit.
7. Keep Your Target Audience in Mind
Research the market and use that information to grab your target audience's attention through the design of your homepage. Not every tip works on every business's website. For instance, some businesses' target audience can be attracted by sharp colors, but probably yours demand colors that are easy on the eyes. Therefore, it's crucial to research everything that attracts and repels your target audience.
8. Optimize Your Page's Speed
Design plays an essential role in deciding your page's load speed. If you incorporate heavy pictures and videos, the page will load slowly, losing many visitors. Many people wait no longer than three seconds for a page to load.
Design and Create Your Homepage Without Spending Thousands of Dollars
Hiring a web designer and developer can cost you thousands of dollars, and it also takes months to launch your website. The solution to this problem is Strikingly. We are a website builder that lets you design your website via a drag-and-drop feature and get it ready to be published in a few minutes.
Strikingly offers ready-to-use website templates which you can modify according to your preferences. Don't worry if you think this website builder is not for you because you're not tech-savvy. Strikingly offers an intuitive website editor which lets you make advanced modifications to your website design without advanced tech knowledge.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly puts forward tons of customization options to create the best homepage design, from changing the navigation bar type to creating your sections and changing their layout.
Strikingly doesn't charge its customers a hefty amount. It allows you to create unlimited websites for free, and if you want, you can subscribe to one of the premium plans to get access to additional features. The premium plans start from $8 a month (billed yearly), and the price decreases as you extend the billing period.
Now that you have the tips to make the design of your homepage effective and a platform where you can build it quickly, start designing your homepage today to generate more website sales. Along with the tips, throw in your creativity. We know you'll create a masterpiece.
