Having an effective homepage is one of the best practices for your business’s website. A homepage serves as the front door of your website. You should design your homepage to feature the visitor’s most requested information and services and to serve as a top-level directory to access the primary sections of your website.
Why Homepages are Important
- The homepage is the main tool for sending your visitors in the right direction.
- Web sites need to focus on helping the visitors find the content and information they search for and need most.
- Studies shows that more than half of all web users evaluate websites based on homepages alone. If you have an ineffective homepage, many visitors will immediately be turned off and may never come back to your site.
- Web visitors want fast, efficient service. On homepages, they expect to find what they’re looking for quickly.
- Web users are impatient. They don’t want to be distracted by text or graphics that don’t help them find what they want or that increase download time.
- Even if your website is targeted to specialized audiences (for example
), your homepage needs to communicate basic information to the the general audience.
The homepage is different from all other web site pages. A well-constructed homepage will project a good first impression to all who visit the site.It is important to ensure that the homepage has all of the features expected of a homepage and looks like a homepage to users. A homepage should clearly communicate the site’s purpose, and show all major options available on the web site.
The homepage serves as your website’s starting point. If visitors feel lost or disoriented visitors they can always return to the homepage and start over. This makes it important to provide a link back to your homepage on every page of your website.