How long should your homepage be?

"Your homepage is too short."

That's what I tell most organisations that come to us for website optimisation. Because it usually takes a hot minute to make a convincing argument and beckon readers in to the rest of your site.

But not every business needs a long homepage.

It all depends on your business and your ideal customers.

5 signs a longer homepage may perform better for you:

• You sell mainly to other businesses.
• You expect your readers to make their purchase decision right there on your website.
• Your products or services are novel, innovative, high-end or out of the ordinary.
• You face a lot of competition in your industry.
• You charge premium prices.

5 signs a shorter homepage may convert better for your business:

• You sell mainly to private individuals (consumers).
• You’re in a B2B industry with longer sales cycles. You have a sales team.
• You offer familiar, self-explanatory products or services.
• You’re the market leader in your industry.
• Your prices are low or medium-range.

How the length of your sales cycle impacts the length of your B2B homepage

To buy or not to buy?

Just like Hamlet’s soliloquy, this decision may take place outside the dialogue with your website. If your business relies on a sales team, customer success, champion-building and offline marketing, your website needs to shoulder less of the sales conversation.

Quick Sprout CEO Lars Lofgren explains:

Long-form sales pages are so long and keep all the copy in one place because the copy needs to take someone through the entire journey at once. The copy needs to do all the work.

For SaaS companies, the web copy is rarely responsible for doing all the selling. The sales funnels are typically longer, and the journey happens over multiple steps and multiple places.

(Source: Andrew Yedlin, Joel Klettke and Joanna Wiebe: How to write a SaaS website – hint: it doesn’t have to be super-short (Sept 2020)

Let’s look at an example: the homepage of Morgen , a calendar and task management app built in Switzerland.

• Morgen is a B2B product. There’s a lot of competition in their space: solutions like Calendly, Acuity, Simplymeet and Notion seek to attract a similar type of customer.
• But Morgen is different: It’s a calendar. It’s a meeting scheduler. It’s a task manager. It’s built in Switzerland, which is known for its high data protection standards. So, Morgen have a bit of explaining to do, to make sure visitors can appreciate the value on offer.
• The pricing table tells us that most readers try or buy the software based on the website – without a sales team getting involved: There’s a generous free plan, and the Pro plan will suit most smaller businesses. Only the Morgen Enterprise audience will need custom deployment facilitated by a sales team.
• The testimonials near the end of the homepage show that many Morgen users are individuals — folks who have identified a need in their personal workflows. As opposed to a corporate rollout of yet another tool.

Of course, if the Morgen strategy were the complete opposite of what’s described here, we’d recommend a completely different homepage.

The takeaway: Homepage length must serve your business model

As I said in my last LinkedIn article, think of your homepage as a conversation:

• If you need a longer conversation to convince someone that you’re a first-class fit for them, choose a longer homepage.
• If it’s a spontaneous decision – or if your homepage is just the first step in a longer series of chats – then a shorter page will do the job better.

Homepage content structure is not rocket science: it’s people science

For many visitors, your homepage is the gateway to your product, your online shop – or the rest of your website. So, beckon them in with a friendly conversation. Help them to orient themselves. Answer their questions in a logical order. And don’t cut things short if they want more information.

If you think your homepage may need a little love, run 5 to 10 user testing sessions. Platforms such as UserBrain allow you to pay as you go for the exact number of sessions you need.

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