What Is a Homepage and What Is Its Purpose?

Landing page or Homepage?

The index page of your website is often the first page visitors will arrive at when clicking on your links. This is why it is also known as the landing page, like a beach it is the place visitors land on when they leave the internet ocean.

One button you cannot omit from your website design is the Home button. Visitors need to be able to get back to your front door quickly because;

    sometimes the visitor gets disorientated with not being able to navigate the virtual space of your website. The homepage is a beacon of known position.
    they scan your important information only and it is located on the homepage
    this is often where you have your specials and offers highlighted

Welcome, come in and make yourself comfortable.

The primary purpose of your homepage is to make visitors immediately feel welcomed and establish trust. This is because you want them to stay longer and check out the rest of your website.

A homepage that doesn't feel welcoming will have a high bounce rate. This is the number of people leaving your website within a few seconds of arrival.

Something doesn't feel right, your homepage may not match their expectations built up from all your search engine marketing or the design appearance of the page doesn't match their idea of your business brand.

Consistency and familiarity

To be welcoming your homepage should be designed using consistent design techniques so the visitor has the feeling that they know how to move around your website. This means your homepage needs to have;

    all your page buttons easily seen and understood in the some format as other websites
    stay within the accepted website design conventions in regards to link appearances and functions
    headings and subheadings for easy scanning
    limited and thoughtful animations. Avoid lots of moving objects or colors that will startle new visitors

Build trust within your website

The internet is full of websites that are designed to scam, trick or mislead visitors so design your homepage to restore or establish trust in your visitor as quick as possible.

Place as many recognisable trust elements on your homepage. This includes any awards or certificates your website has to prove that it can be trusted by users.

Placing an address for a real building establishes trust because they know that they can find your business if they need to. Avoid PO boxes and addresses in countries that are known to mislead web visitors if possible.

Include your history

Provide enough details on your homepage that is similar to what you would say if a new visitor arrived at your business front door. Welcome them, tell them who you are and why you can be trusted.

I hope that you now can see that the purpose of your homepage is purely to make visitors feel welcome and trust your business. It does need to contain all the required content and SEO material, but it has to do this while staying consistent to web users and being a place they want to stay that little bit longer.


Article Source: Paul Baker