Your homepage is the most important page of your website. The majority of visitors enter your website through this page, and you have only a few seconds to make a good impression and convince them to spend more time on your site. It can either grab your visitor’s attention or scare them away. Just like the clothes you wear, the design of your homepage says something about you. A homepage should be designed with the user in mind. Most of the time, users want an experience that is rewarding; one that engages them and does not waste their time.
Following are the tips for creating a successful homepage that will help to generate more business and traffic to your website
- Keep your Company brand in mind – Stick with your brand’s or company’s existing style, tone and colors, when considering your homepage design.
- Favicon – Favicon or Favorites Icon is the little icon alongside your site's name in the favorites list, before the URL in the address bar, as a bookmarked website on the desktop, and on the windows taskbar and in the "Links" bar. It adds an element of professionalism to your site and helps you stand out from other websites.
- User-Friendly Navigation – A good and simple navigation structure is required to help visitors to find what they are looking for. It should also appear in the same location on every page of your site.
- Search box – If your site is large, then add a search box so that they can search for information through a search engine. It should be placed on the top-right corner of your homepage. It should be at least 30 characters wide.
- Images – Images should not be too large for your content area. Many people process image in their mind more enthusiastically than words alone, but it will backfire if they seem irrelevant or frivolous. It should also match with the website template background.
- Flash – Avoid Flash objects in your homepage, since it will increase the website loading time. This will be very annoying for the visitors.
- Slideshow – You can put multiple images together in order to create an animated slideshow with transition effect. It is not necessary to create the slideshow using Flash, you can use JavaScript instead.
- Background – Plain white background can be boring, so use a background which can be a solid color or an image. It can really improve the appearance of a page, but it should not conflict with the text font and color; users should be able to read the text content.
- Logo – Logo is a symbol or an illustration, or a combination of both, but your goal is that it should project the company’s intended image. Your logo design should be unique and easy to memorize.
