First impressions can be lasting ones. The first impression that your website makes is when your visitor comes in through the front door. Your home page is that entry point for your customer. When they decide to visit your website, have you made them feel welcome? There are several ways that you can assure that you have put out the welcome mat.
Keep it simple! – If your websites home page design appears to be too complex, it may intimidate the average customer. Remember the rule, KISS. Keep It Simple Silly. Keep the information that your customer is searching for easy to find and easy to read.
Include a search box – The visitor to your home page may have to locate the product or service that you offer in a hurry. A search box may provide a quick visit today, but may make your customer feel more welcome to return another day.
Use graphics that make sense – A quick way to make a dramatic change during a website redesign is to change the images to more closely match the focus of your website. A picture is sometimes worth a thousand words and it is important to know that you are saying the right thing to promote your business.
Preview your website content – Consider adding some teasers on the home page to entice visitors to dig deeper into your website. It is important to capture your visitors’ interest and to prove that you can be the solution to their problem on the home page. Remember, they might not see a second page of your website unless you can show them value up front.
Who are you? Make sure that your company contact information is on every page. If you cannot have it on every page, then definitely include a link to “Contact Us” in the navigation of your website. How terrible would it be to have a visitor to your website who wants to contact you, only to NOT be able to find your information. An additional benefit of using your address on your website is for local search advertising.
Tag you’re it! – Write a compelling title or tag line that can summarize what you offer to the customer on your website. It also doesn’t hurt from an SEO standpoint if the beginning of that tag line is a great keyword phrase!
Evaluating your website to make sure that these key points are put into place to welcome your customers to do business with you, can help convert a visitor into a long-term customer.
By simply making a few changes to your home page, could enable you to roll out your welcome mat properly.
Design 4 Dot Com, Inc. is a web design company based in Orlando and we would be happy to evaluate your website to make sure that you are making the most impact to your business.