The quality of the homepage, the first pillar of your website due to its centrality, has a decisive impact on the performance of your business, the reflection of your brand image or the efficiency of the navigation.

Whether you currently have a website or are considering creating one, there are some simple rules you can follow to make sure your homepage will serve its purpose and help you attract more customers or make better sales.

1. Focus on added value

The first thing to know about your homepage is that it should have one purpose: to present your business and its added value.

A customer visiting your website should immediately identify a few things:

• What can you do for them?
• What is the unique point that differentiates you from your competitors?

The role of a homepage is not to simply list your products and services, but rather to “sell” what you have to offer. If you focus on this point, you will see, results will come.

2. Introduce a call to action

Now that your page has a unique objective, try to identify what you want your customers to do. Do you want them to create an account on your website? Do you want them to try your products? Do you want them to get in touch with you?

Once you have identified this, remember it and try to invite your users to do what you want them to do. This is what we call: the “call to action”. Usually represented by a big button on your homepage, you have different ways to implement a call to action. You should just try to respect the following rules:

Your call to action must be :

• unique: you should not have more than one call to action
• clear: a few words should be enough. No need for long copy or explanation: a user should be able to understand it very quickly.
• visually identifiable: Finally, make sure your call to action stands out visually from the rest of your homepage. It should be large, bold, colorful and visible.

3. Be clear

Even when you have found your added value and created a call to action, you must not forget the readability of your homepage.

Your text should be written in large, readable text on any medium. Important points should be highlighted. The text should be easy to read. Visitors will probably not spend much time on your homepage. Make sure they get your added value quickly.

Our tip: try to use images, they are often easier to understand than long text.

4. Don’t forget the loading time

Finally, don’t forget the loading time of your site. Especially when you add a lot of visual elements to your homepage: images, animations, videos, … the loading can quickly become slow. But, never forget that adding 1 second to the loading time of your homepage can make you lose up to 20% of your visitors (source: https://www.pingdom.com/blog/page-load-time-really-affect-bounce-rate).

So, if you feel that your website is taking a long time to load, try to fix it as soon as possible, it may be worth it.