5 features your website homepage should have
Since your homepage is the first point of contact for anybody looking for your business online, it’s important to make a good first impression. As much as you might want to make your homepage as flashy as possible, you won’t achieve anything if you don’t have some basic elements first. You can add the sexy, attention-grabbing stuff later, but not before you include these five features first.
Contact Information
You should always include the contact information for your business right on your homepage. That should go without saying, but there are still far too many businesses that bury things such as their email address, phone number, and business location on their website where people can’t find it. While your contact information doesn’t need to be front and center underneath your business’s logo, you should be able to see it with a quick glance at your homepage. You can place it at the bottom of the page (possibly the footer), but it absolutely needs to be there. After all, you won’t be able to serve any of your clients if they don’t know how to reach you.
Engaging Images
One of the purposes of a homepage is to grab your visitors’ attention. As enlightening as a well-written welcome message or a blog post can be, they can’t hold a candle to an engaging photo or logo. You shouldn’t load your homepage full of high-resolution photographs since they can cause your site to load slowly on old computers, but a few images that relates to your product or service that entices your would-be clients to want to know more about your business are a must for any homepage.
A Video
Not all businesses will be able to show a video right on their homepage, but a short clip welcoming visitors will help sell what you have to offer. Videos are arguably becoming more ubiquitous online than text, so you should definitely make a video that relates to your services if you can. Just be careful about what you show; nobody likes a loud or obnoxious ad to start playing as soon as they log onto a site. As long as your video is low-key and to the point, it will make your homepage more effective.
A Blog
Even though some people might say otherwise, blogging is not dead. A well-written and well-maintained blog can allow you to provide news and information to your clients that you might not be able to convey anywhere else. Naturally, you should include links to your blog right on your homepage. Like your contact information, try to make this link as easy to find as possible. As always, make sure you update your blog regularly to keep your readers and clients coming back.
Links to Social Media
In this day and age, you absolutely need to have a presence on social media if you want to reach as many people as possible. Naturally, it’s not enough just to create a Facebook or Twitter account for your business; you need to make sure people can find those accounts, which means putting links to them on your homepage. Think of this as an extension of your contact information. Make it easy to find, and encourage users to follow you on their preferred social networks. While you’re at it, make sure that you update your accounts regularly. Like your blog, you need to give visitors a reason to keep coming back to you.
When it comes to the homepage for your business, you can technically do whatever you want to make it enticing for your visitors. However, you should always include these features if you can. They will be far more effective at making the all-important first impression that your business needs to grow.
