Design a better homepage with goals & strategies

Yes, Your homepage could be better

There are hundreds of websites out there, with homepage as same as yours. But most of them are shitty. Maybe yours too.

Tell me this, does your homepage follow goals ? does it have a strategy ?
I teach you what goals your website homepage should have.
And how to achieve that.

Goals: What to present, inform or capture.
How: How to do that.

1. Goal : First impression

Your website should captivate the visitors interest from the very few seconds. If the first sight of page doesn’t give them a feeling of satisfaction, they will leave the page.

How:

Branding

Your company is a brand, you are a brand, so is your website. Branding is not just about the logo. It starts with, but not limited to color themes, fonts, design elements. It is also about the personality, the attitude, the voice of your company. That should be presented in your website’s design too. It’s about choosing right colors, right photographs, right sentences. If your homepage looks like just a bunch of hard-tried design elements stuffed together, it’s missing a personality, it’s missing the brand.

Aesthetics

While there are many hidden aspects of a successful website design, but it is no doubt that the aesthetic part always dominates. The website should obviously look visually appealing and attractive to generate an interest. And it should be as unique as you.

Awards / Recognitions / Reviews

Compare these 2 mo:mo: restaurants:
One with a big sign-board written “We serve delicious Mo:Mo:” but very few people inside.
Another one with so many customers inside that you have to wait for the seat.
Guess which serves the delicious Mo:Mo: ?

Display your real awards, recognitions and real reviews from real people.

Strong USPs

Unique Selling Propositions.
Create short and strong sentences that make you stand apart from your competitors. The USP should focus on your expertise and energy.

2. Goal: Introduction

Give an introduction, but not a whole paragraph. It should be short and quick enough to let your visitors move to your products faster.

How:

Fast facts

List out the facts like, your established year, number of staff, years of experience, awards, expertise etc. List them as bullets or with icons.

Services highlight

What are your core expertise, highlight them.

Expertise & Experiences

With hundreds of competitors in the market, your potential customers are looking for genuinely experts and experienced company, so highlight your expertise and experiences in convincing way.

Why you ?

Why should they choose you? What differentiate you from others? What unique value can you provide?
Your visitors should get these answers in your homepage.

3. Goal: Build trust & credibility

Visitors should trust you to pay you for your services. They should be convinced that you can provide what you said, you have done it earlier too and there are many happy customers already.

How:

Proof

Show real proofs. Use testimonials from your real past customers. With photos if possible. Pull out good reviews from popular forums like tripadvisor, lonelyplanet etc (if you have).
Use real photographs in your banners, with people in it, with your real guides (if you have. if you don’t have, start taking these types of photographs).

Social presence

Include links to social media profiles like facebook/twitter/youtube. Include the followers number(if it is impressive enough). If the design allows, include the feed box too.

Available and approachable

Make your visitors feel that real human from your company operates the website and communicates with the users.
Include hotline telephone numbers. Add a live chat box. Add links to customer support, contact form page.

Show knowledge & expertise

Let your visitors know that you know what you are doing. Make them feel you are an expert.
Add any or all of these in your homepage:

• Tips ( very useful and not-commonly-found tips for customers )
• Updated blog posts ( frequently updated blog posts )
• Expert help desk ( facilitate visitors to ask their questions )

4. Goal: Drive users to package pages

The main goal of making a website is to sell your packages. So, your main strategy should be to guide and navigate users towards the selling pages.

How:

Search feature

The main issue i see in existing sites is the search function. Many users want to save their time by not browsing through the guess-and-win menus and rather just hit the search with their keyword. There should be very easy and user friendly search function, with simple search and advanced search functions.

Clear CTAs ( Call-To-Actions)

CTAs mean buttons and links. These are the keys to the products pages. So make as few buttons and links in the homepage as possible and just highlight the CTAs that will guide the users to the product pages. If there are secondary links like info pages, about pages etc, make them less highlighted than the “Sales CTAs” like Browse packages, Package detail etc.

Content Hierarchy

Placing your content strategically will also affect what do the visitors do next. Put products and important pages links above rather than informative pages like about us, tips, testimonials etc.

5. User experience

A website should not only look good. It should function amazingly easy and satisfyingly for the users. They should be able to get required information easily without giving too much stress to their mind.

How:

Clean & simple UI

Many of existing website designs i see are designed from designers view, not from users’ point of view. We shouldn’t design for the designers. We shouldn’t try hard to use heavy graphics and elements to make it look good. We should design the content. The design should be simple enough so that users can use the website with ease and fun.

Frictionless actions for users

There will be clear steps and links so that users do not get confused on what to do next. The buttons and links should have simple language. Use very common practices as much as possible because users do not want to click on links by guessing what happens.

Interactive & engaging

There are many ways you can indulge your users with your website. If your users like participating and interacting with your website, they will spend more time to know you. Some tools we can use are :

• Videos
• Polls
• Questions
• Help desk

Take a look at a homepage we designed recently at moksha: www.highgroundnepal.com

See this section in the homepage:
It is the interactive and infographic way of incorporating a lot of information without boring texts and paragraphs.

This section provides real photos and reviews for trust, credibility & proof. Mission statement to present short intro and commitment. Video for user engagement. Brochure for more detail info.

So, take a look at your homepage now and think. Does your homepage have a goal ?