How to Optimize Your Website Homepage

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While your small business website should run smoothly as a whole, having a well optimized homepage is one of the most important parts.

Your website homepage is like a retailer’s storefront. It’s typically the first thing a potential customer sees and either encourages or discourages them from entering further. So, make it great!

Similarly, if you can’t get them in the front door (or past the first page) the chances of that visit resulting in a purchase is very unlikely.

This is because, just like in reality, online visitors will make quick judgments of your business by its homepage alone, so it’s important to make a good first impression.

Apart from the technical aspects of SEO, here are three ways to better optimize your small business’s website homepage.

Present a Clear Tagline

From your business name to your marketing slogans, practically every business owner knows the importance of clear branding. This concept applies to your website as well.

After all, visitors first want to know what your business does (or provides), how it benefits them, and why they should choose you over the competition.

In essence, your homepage is where you introduce your business to visitors in a concise and informative way. Taglines are ideal for this since you don’t want to overload visitors with too much information or confuse them with vague descriptions.

Have a Call to Action

As well as your business name, critical info, and a good tagline, your homepage should also contain a CTA, or call-to-action, that encourages visitors to interact further.

If you sell products, this can involve promoting an ongoing sale or announcing a hot new item.

If you provide a service, then a common tactic is to place a simple “Get Started Today” or “Sign Up for a Free Trial” button on your homepage.

Your CTA can be standard or unique. However, it should suit your business’s image. When creating a homepage CTA, remember that good ones are compelling, while great ones often appeal to a visitor’s desires or instill a sense of excitement.

Be Easy to Navigate

While your homepage does a lot on the introduction front, another one of its critical roles is to act as a guide for visitors.

After all, an engaging and well-designed homepage will intuitively direct potential customers to your main pages where they can actually learn more about your products and services and possibly even make a purchase.

So you’ll want to make sure that your website homepage is easy to navigate. Visual clutter like tabs, sliders, and animated images are typically unnecessary and can be quite distracting.

While visitors do come to your website with a purpose and are often looking for something specific, most of them won’t waste time digging through a disorganized homepage. Don’t be afraid of simplicity and white space.

To improve navigation, take a careful look at your homepage menu. This is one of the main places visitors look to quickly get to other pages and should be well organized.

Ideally, your homepage menu should have no more than 5 or 6 concise headers that are easily read and understood.

In addition to the three things listed above, you also need to provide them with critical contact details such as a phone number and/or email address, which are just a couple of the Seven Things Every Small Business Website Needs today.

What else do you think would help optimize the home page of your website? Let us know in the comments below.

To your success!
Ken Partain