How poor homepage structure harms your business – and how to get it right

Some businesses treat their homepage like the outside of a tube of jelly beans. Colourful brand imagery, plenty of serving suggestions, lists of attractively named flavours squeezed around the legally required small print such as nutritional information, customer service contact info. Oh, and your current prize draw too.

After all, who knows who’ll be visiting your homepage? They could be anybody. From a job seeker to a member of the press. From someone who mistyped a search term to a VIP customer.

It’s not surprising then, that structuring such an assortment of information can feel like a daunting task – and that homepages are the most difficult part of a website to write.

So, let’s have a look at how a poor homepage structure harms your business.

No structure, no traffic

Search engines use structural elements like headings, subheadings, images and links to analyse your homepage and determine what it’s about.

Let’s take Google as an example: The Google EEAT model prioritises web pages that demonstrate Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust.

Wondering how structure plays into this? Well, think about some Authoritative, Experienced Experts that you Trust. Perhaps a medical doctor, a colleague or a university professor you admire. When they present information to you, it’s probably not a firehose of random remarks.

Applied to your homepage, it’s only natural that a logical structure will help you attract traffic and turn it into leads. After all, the page exists to represent you and your business as an Expert, Experienced, Authoritative and Trustworthy partner for your customers.

But ranking well on Google is not the only reason homepage content structure is so essential. It’s also one of the simplest ways to improve the experience of your mobile visitors.

And in turn, increase your conversion rates.

No structure, no mobile shop sales

Responsive web design may be the norm these days, but that doesn’t mean viewing homepages on mobile devices is a walk in a park. Here’s why: many homepages lack structure and overview. “Overview” lets visitors see the page or website’s structure at a glance so they can quickly get to where they want to go.

According to one of the most extensive studies ever conducted by Baymard Institute, disorientation and a lack of overview are especially prevalent in mobile e-commerce, where many products compete for our attention:

The issues caused by a lack of overview lead users to miss important information, select incorrect options, or draw conclusions that aren’t correct (e.g., a particular product isn’t available, when it’s simply out of view in a product list). During testing we observed many users abandoning a product or site because they couldn’t locate critical information.

And nowhere is this issue more pressing than the e-commerce sector: Statista’s Market Insights report that in 2023 and 2024, 60 percent of all global e-commerce sales happen on mobile.

In other words, if you want to increase conversion rates, your best bet is to optimise the user experience of your online shop for mobile users.

How to get your homepage structure right for mobile visitors

• KISS: Keep your homepage structure as simple as possible. That Baymard Institute study I cited proposes a number of improvements that could all be summarised in this point. The clearer your structure, the more easily you’ll achieve a good content score, which is essential for SEO.
• Avoid making them scroll and scroll to find a table of contents or the end of the page.
• The best possible experience for smartphone shoppers may look wildly different from the one on desktop. So, if you’re in e-commerce, consider offering a mobile app.
• Do not simply copy big online retailers like Wayfair, Macy’s, Walmart, Sephora or Amazon. No matter their reputation for conversion rate optimisation, they often get things wrong – as demonstrated by many examples in the Baymard Institute study.
• Instead, take inspiration from pages you like – and then do your research. If you’re looking to improve your website, run some user testing first. Just 5 to 10 tests per customer segment will reveal the most important stumbling blocks to taking action on your site. Combine this with reading large-scale UX studies to turn your findings into a prioritised road map.

These insights apply whether you’re in e-commerce or not.

Even if you’re a service provider or in the B2B software sector, it’s likely that a large proportion of your visitors visit your homepage on a mobile device: According to January 2024 data shared by Statista, smartphones accounted for almost 60 percent of global web page views – with slightly lower figures for Europe (52.62 percent) and North America (45.48 percent).

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