Have you just launched your online business and need to write a home page for your website? Wondering if there are any special rules you should know? What elements must absolutely be included? Where to start? Know that the home page, or homepage, is a reflection of your business and your brand image. It is therefore essential to take care in its construction and drafting. However, this is not an exercise to be taken lightly: it requires a lot of reflection, even introspection. Follow the guide and find in this article the essential steps to create an effective landing page that will retain your customers and increase your conversion rate.

Creating a homepage: a brainstorming exercise

What is the homepage for?

The homepage forms the basis of any website, as it often serves as the main front door and is among the most visited pages. Generally, it is used for:

• Briefly present your site: it is necessary to ensure that the Internet user immediately knows who he is dealing with;
• Convince the visitor that this site can help solve one or more problem(s);
• Direct the visitor and redirect him to the pages that will be most useful to him.

Know that the universal purpose of a homepage is to convert the visitor that is to say to encourage him to take an action on the site: click on a link, buy a product, fill out a contact form, or still subscribe to a newsletter.

Think about your homepage goals

The design phase of a home page involves asking some basic questions. You have to try to put yourself in the place of your visitors: what are they looking for when they arrive on your site? What do you have to offer them? What are the pages or categories that absolutely must be highlighted?

The objectives of a homepage can be multiple and differ depending on the purpose of the site. The home page of an e-commerce site does not necessarily resemble that of a blog or that of a local artisan. What to put on your homepage is a personal question, specific to your activity, to the energy you want to release. However, there are a few elements that must be included if you want to increase your conversion rate.

Define the elements that will make up the homepage

The slogan or the catchphrase: the centerpiece of the homepage

To write an attractive homepage, you have to start by thinking about a slogan. Also called a title or teaser, it is an essential element to capture the reader’s attention and encourage him to continue his visit. It should be short and impactful enough for your audience to immediately identify with it. To write a good catchphrase, prefer a direct tone and favor “you” rather than “we”. Do not hesitate to list several ideas for slogans and vary them by changing the words or expressions. Here, you must not be afraid to let your creativity speak, nor to bring out your personality! Remember that the slogan must be placed above the fold line to be seen without the need to scroll.

The promise: convince the Internet user to stay

Below the tagline is usually what is called the promise or main message. Its purpose is to complete your slogan to convince your visitors to continue their visit. It is a description in a few short sentences of what you offer to help them “solve” their problems. To do this, you can begin to list concrete solutions and cite examples of immediate or long-term results. If these results are coveted by your visitors, then you have every chance of turning them into customers.

Once the main message has been stated, you can briefly present your background and your company, but be careful not to overdo it: the about page already fulfills this function very well. Finally, the slogan and the promise must include at least one call to action (or Call to Action): its purpose is to quickly trigger an interaction or a conversion on the part of the visitor.

The other elements of the homepage

Once these essential elements have been defined, you are free to compose your home page as you wish. Most often, we find the following elements:

• A navigation menu located in the header to display the most important pages of the site;
• Presentation texts of the different categories;
• An insert to present the news of the site;
• Customer testimonials if you sell products or services;
• Several calls to action refer to social media pages, newsletter subscription forms, free eBook downloads, contact forms, product purchases, etc.

Write a clear and effective homepage

A synthesis exercises

The home page should not have endless blocks of text that no one will take the time to read. It must be clear, and concise while conveying a precise message. It is useless to hope to present your entire site on your homepage. You would take the risk of losing your visitors and increasing your bounce rate. Creating a homepage involves the need to make choices. Highlighting the “bestsellers” or the products with which customers are the most satisfied is always a good idea.

We must not forget that the home page is above all a crossroads, a redirection page. As a result, its design is most often done after having written the other pages of its site. Be careful not to fall into the opposite extreme either with a homepage devoid of text content or too minimalist. To achieve a good balance and create the ideal home page for your website, we advise you to use the services of Wikipedia editors.

And SEO in all this?

SEO also matters here but to a lesser extent. It goes without saying that you must place the target queries related to your activity on your home page, in order to gain visibility on the search engines. But above all, it will be necessary to bet on copywritten content (which engages the reader) and optimized from the point of view of user experience. Finally, writing a home page is similar to writing a sales page.

Take the time to think about the user experience

The user experience (or UX design) is just as important as the editorial content on a homepage. Navigation must be fluid and intuitive. The tree structure of the site must appear clearly, in a navigation menu at the top of the page for example. Do not force your visitors to have to find the different answers to their questions on their own. If the home page is not structured in an obvious way, your visitors will flee and your bounce rate may skyrocket!

If you want to learn more about the user experience, this video by Lucie Rondelet, an expert in content strategy should please you.

Upgrade your homepage

As a general rule, it is advisable to design your homepage dynamically. We will then seek to make it evolve with its content. For example, in the case of an e-commerce site, the home page often follows seasonality. Thus, during the Christmas period, we will direct the customer toward potential gift ideas. During the sales period, we highlight the products to be sold before the arrival of the new collections, etc. In other words, we will modify its home page according to what is new on the site: new products, new services, and the most recent articles in the case of a blog or a site informative. In addition, generating renewal makes it possible to show that the site remains active. This has the advantage of sending a positive signal to search engines in order to keep its strategic positions when it is well-referenced.

Writing a homepage can be a tedious exercise. It is nevertheless a crucial element of your website. To be sure to create an effective and perfectly optimized home page, do not hesitate to hire a specialist in web writing. He can also take care of writing your entire site, and why not a blog part in order to boost your traffic? Discover without delay the many talents of the Web in order to make your website take off!