5 Quick Changes to Immediately Improve your Website’s Homepage

If your company’s website has a weak homepage, you are bound to lose paying customers. Your homepage is a customer’s first glance at who you are as a brand and how you can provide value for them…and if your first impression sucks, they will likely be clicking away.

A huge part of user experience design is making sure that a company’s homepage is optimized. Your potential customers will be much more willing to do business with you if they can trust your company right from the start. How do you build trust immediately? With a professional and thought-out homepage that your users can easily use and resonate with.

Here’s 5 quick changes that you can implement to your own website’s homepage to immediately improve your user experience and increase your conversion rates.

1. Include ONE central call-to-action

Have you ever come across a website that looks like this:

It’s a mess.

The problem with sites like that is that they’re asking TOO MUCH of their users!

When designing your homepage, it’s important to remember that your users can be easily overwhelmed. They probably don’t want to come to your site and do a thousand different things at once.

Although you may want to ask your users to sign up for your newsletter, buy your cool new product, purchase your service, and donate to some worthy cause all at once, this is the exact opposite approach you want to take. When it comes to call-to-actions, especially on your homepage, less is almost always more.

So, how do you figure out what to ask your users to do?

Ask yourself this question:

If a potential customer lands on my website but only has time to do ONE thing, what would I be happiest with them doing?

It’s all about prioritization. Maybe you want them to check out your previous work with clients. Maybe you want them to see a new product you have, or maybe you want them to read your blog.

The trick is to ask users to do the most important thing that will benefit them, and then stop asking.

2. Match your images with your intended user

This one is a little bit more of a no-brainer, but it’s often overlooked.

Using images on your homepage is a great opportunity to let your potential customers get an idea of what you’re all about. If used correctly, the right images can help you out a ton.

The trick is to make sure that your images resemble the audience you’d like to attract. For example, if you’re a retirement planner who works mostly with people in their 20s, the photo on your homepage should be of people in their 20s. Anything else doesn't make sense.

People that land on your website want to feel like they’re in the right place, from the second the page loads, all the way to when they exit your site. If the images you use don’t reflect your target audience, they’ll most likely go looking for a business that better suits them.

So, make sure you use images that your target audience will resonate with.

3. Narrow your copy to one specific audience

All great websites have text on their homepage that gives users an idea of who they are and what they can do for you.

But a common mistake most people make is that they try to make the copy on their homepage appeal to literally everyone. This isn’t the right approach.

Unless you’re Apple or YouTube and your audience is actually 99% of the population, you need to figure out who specifically you tailor your product or service to. Make your homepage copy as specific as you possibly can.

Here’s some examples to illustrate this idea:

Bad: Find contractors near you

Better: Hire trusted electricians in Philadelphia

Bad: Designer helping businesses achieve their goals

Better: UX designer focusing on increasing your conversion rates

Bad: Accounting software to make taxes easier

Better: Accounting made easy for first-time taxpayers

The point is: you need to figure out EXACTLY who your audience is, and then you need to make your copy so specific that the users of your site will know they’re in the right place immediately.

4. Avoid putting text on top of busy images

There is nothing more unprofessional than text on your homepage that is impossible to read. We’ve all seen it…a great picture that’s ruined by text in the wrong place.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

When it comes to text on your homepage (and pretty much any page of your site), your best bet will be black text on a white background, or white text on a black background, with small variations. Here’s how we can make that same bad example into something much better:

This is a small change that makes a huge difference.

If your website doesn’t look professional, users may be less willing to do business with you. The placement of your text can make or break your homepage’s success.

5. Make your content read from left to right

Here’s another quick change that you can use to instantly make your homepage better.

Unless you know otherwise about your users, most people read left to right. So, design with that in mind.

It will be much easier for users to read your text if it’s exactly how they’d expect it to be. Don’t try to get fancy with your text, keep it simple, and have it read left to right.

Key Takeaways

When it’s all said and done, just keep your users in mind. For every design decision you make for your homepage, ask yourself how you can make it easier, more effective, and more efficient for your users. Think of the little ways that you can resonate with your user, build trust, and tell them exactly what they want to hear.

Have any thoughts? I’d love to hear them!