Your website needs to be built to impress. You have only five seconds from the time a visitor clicks on your link to impress them and hold their attention.
Below are the keys to building a homepage that will be high in user engagement and give visitors a positive first experience.
Loading Time
Since you only have five seconds to make a first impression, you need your page to load in full in less than that time frame. If not, you have instantly lost any chance to win them over.
Ideally, your page should load in two seconds, this will still allow your visitor a full three seconds to take in your heading and images and decide if they like you or not.
Here are a few of the ways you can help reduce loading times:
- Use a quality web host
- Optimise images, scripts and videos
- Minimise the number of plugins you use
- Reduce your files (CSS files and JavaScript)
The free tool GT Metrix will analyse your site in real-time, assess your speed and show you where you can improve.
Bold Headline
Your headline is the first thing people see. You need to leverage this to cover as many positive ticks for your viewer while still being crystal clear about what your business is and what you do.
- Use only a few words – a sentence or two at the maximum.
- Answer a basic question
- Point The way to other pages to get additional details.
- Be clear
- Keep it simple
If you have an E-commerce site you will probably offer a number of different products. A Featured Posts Scroller can help showcase multiple products individually so each one is clear, bold and defined.
Easy Navigation
Your visitors need to get from your homepage to a purchase in three clicks or less.
A “purchase” will depend on what you offer and how you do business. For example, it might be:
- Product listing (homepage) – Add to Cart. Checkout Now
- Service description (homepage) – Book an appointment. Contact Information. Form Fill
To give the best user experience, offer as much help as possible to make the next step easy and clear with buttons, links and product pages as well as easy to see menus. As well as keeping them on your website longer, you’ll also increase your chance of a conversion.
Design
A good, clean website design eliminates mess and confusion.
The best website designs utilise:
- White space
- High contrast text to background
- Well balanced layouts
- Colours and themes that align with the look and feel of their brand
- A recognisable and consistent logo
Consistency is crucial. Once you find a layout and colour scheme that works, use it across all your pages.
Call To Action
Your Call To Action (CTA) is an essential part of your user engagement and helps improve a buyer’s journey. It is not a push for a sale, but rather a shortcut that gets them where they need to go quickly.
Users are on your website for a reason, you need to know what that reason is and put steps in place to improve their pathways.
Some proven CTAs include:
- Subscriptions
- Contact us
- Money-back guarantee
- Buttons for Buy Now or Sign Up Now
- Free trial periods
- Bonus offers for immediate purchase (such as discount or upgrade)
- Downloads
A call to action may not be a direct purchase, they may make an appointment or sign up for information on a future event or product.
Extend To Other Senses
Websites are very heavy on the visual senses. A lot of professional businesses get so bogged down in providing factual information, they forget to make it visually pleasing. Make sure you use real and genuine photos of your business and your team that provide colour, and personality and are easy to understand at a glance.
We use far more than our vision to engage with our environment so opening up to new sensors with your website can engage engagement and interaction.
Kinesthetics: Interactive clicks. Games. Questionnaires.
Sound: Video. Audio. Music. Animations. Sound Effects.
Videos are a powerful engagement tool where users get to see your personality, understand your business and products in detail and trust what you do.
Solve Problems
Now that your visitor has the introduction covered it’s time to go into detail about what problems your business solves and address any questions they may have.
Before you start you need to have a detailed understanding of the problems and challenges your visitors are facing.
You can cover the basics with an outline of what you do and why you do it and include a list of benefits and features or perhaps provide a brief, clear example of the gap in the market you cover.
Social Proof
Your website needs to build and sustain trust. Trust is the number one denominator that leads to a sale. Without it, no matter how good your product or service, people will stay away.
Customer reviews and testimonials are real-life examples of real people using and loving your brand.
The important thing here is to ask for a referral when you get positive feedback. Always ask permission to use a person’s feedback and include their name, location and date of their purchase.
Video testimonials or reviews with photos take that trust and credibility that much further so be sure to snap pictures of a purchase or ask for user photos to give you this extra edge.
Once you have incorporated all eight of these elements into your website, you will have created a homepage that engages your visitors and turns readers into prospects, and prospects into customers!
