Your homepage is the first encounter many customers have with your business. How important is it to make a good first impression?

75% of web users admit to making judgments about the credibility of an organization based on the design of its web site. – Source: Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility, Persuasive Technology Lab. Stanford University, 2003

68% of U.S. online shoppers agree that they will distrust a site that doesn’t have a professional appearance. – Source: eMarketer, 2006

83% of businesses use the Internet to research and find potential vendors. – Source: Enquiro: Business to Business Survey 2007.

An effective home page is the first step to conversion. Take this quick audit of your home page to determine whether you could improve your home page’s effectiveness.

1. Does your homepage have a clear goal?

The overall goal of your website is to sell your product or service, but the goal of your homepage might be to entice clients to enter the site. The home page needs to give the user a reason to continue. It is the gateway to the rest of your website. Before looking at anything else, what is the goal of your home page? A designer must be intimately familiar with your goals in order to create an effective design. Your content and design should combine to support that goal.

For example, if you provide a moving service for companies, your home page goal could be “to get a business owner to call for an estimate”. If so, you need to provide on the page that allows a customer to make the decision to call you or at least explore your site. You might want to list the other services you provide which make you a one-stop shop for moving such as: warehousing and storage, rentals, office moves, or employee relocation? In the example below, the home page provides not one, but two, incentives to get in touch: “Live Online Support” and “Request an Estimate”.

If you are a custom home design firm, perhaps your goal is “to attract clients who share our design sensibilities” because you want to establish a reputation for modernist home projects. Therefore, your home page needs less information, but the design should be clean, minimalist, and reflect a modernist aesthetic while showcasing some of your projects. It’s unlikely anyone will buy a home right off the website, so a call-to-action would encourage clients to call you up and start a dialogue.

2. Can users find what they expect to find?

There are some basic components that should be instantly identifiable and easy to find. Users need assurance that they will be able to find their way around the site. Think about where you would expect to find elements such as:

• Your logo and tag line
• Navigation menus
• Contact information
• Site search

3. Is there a reason for every design element on your homepage?

Minimize clutter and make it easy for users to discern the goal of your homepage. Widgets, fancy navigation, or animated images may be eye-catching, but unless they contribute to the overall functionality of the homepage and its goal, all they do is distract. Distraction makes it harder for users to find what they need, whether it’s information or navigation.

4. Does your homepage layout prioritize important content?

Not all content on a homepage is created equal. One way a good design can prioritize content is through layout – the position of text or design elements. If you had to prioritize the content on your home page, what would that hierarchy look like? Now look at where that content is positioned on your page.

Studies have shown that we scan content according to an F-shape. Our eyes begin at the top left of a page, then to the right, then down. Are the most important messages on your website laid out to take advantage of the F-shape?

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, April 17, 2006: F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

5. Do you highlight important content?

Point 4 explains how content can be prioritized through correct positioning on a page. But within each area of a page, you may want to highlight specific content – which can be text or graphical elements. To make important elements really pop out, you can employ numerous tactics:

• Whitespace: isolates the content or graphical element to make it stand out more
• Size: a larger image or font will cue the user that this information matters more
• Contrast: a contrasting colour or font differentiates an element from its surroundings. There is a reason why BUY NOW buttons are always high contrast.

6. Does important information look like an ad?

We are so inundated with online ads that our brains now filter out content that displays like ads, no matter how important the information. If there are important messages or call-to-actions, avoid design elements or positioning that could make them look like ads. In a now-classic experiment, users were asked to find the population of the USA from the US Census Bureau website. Even though this information was located prominently in big red fonts on the top right of the page, only 14% of visitors read and found the information.

7.  Page response times matter

A 2006 study by Akamai and JupiterResearch identified the ‘4 Second Threshold’ as the average amount of time that an online shopper is willing to wait for a web page to render. It is now 2011. Computers are faster, networks are faster, and consumers are even more demanding when it comes to page response time. The homepage is the first contact customers have with your company. A fast-loading clean, crisp design will do more for your brand than a slow, content-heavy page. Go back to Point 3 – clutter. Clutter not only deters due to visual confusion, it can slow down page performance.

Instead of creating a marketing plan and then forcing staff members to fit into that mold, do the opposite.  Allow staff talents to drive the direction of your internet marketing efforts.  Working this way will lead to a more well-rounded campaign that everyone will enjoy doing.

1.       Writing Content

Writing content is fundamental to internet marketing.   For most websites, written content makes up the bulk of the site and the content falls into two categories: informational and sales.  Informational content consists of free information put out on the web.  These articles give advice or tips on how to do something related to your business or industry.  But nowhere should you try to sell your product.  There are other places to sell and this isn’t one of them.  Informational content can include eBooks, articles and blog posts.

The other type of written content is sales.  You’re a business (or an organization or charity or church) and you need a place to tell your customers what you have to offer.  This is the place to do it.  Sales and marketing content should give your customers enough information about your product in order to make a buying decision.  Be sure to include a call to action at the end of the page and let customers know exactly what they should do next.

2.       Design

People who naturally love design are excellent assets to your e-marketing team.  They can make banners, landing pages and create flash videos to put on your site.  Creating different aspects of the site, while keeping with the branding of your company will add flare to your website and help keep customer’s interest in the company and the site.

On the surface, it may not seem like design is an important part of internet marketing, but in fact it is.  Good design that is clean, simple and professional helps with your e-marketing in that it builds credibility for the site.   Design is part of positioning yourself as an expert in your field.  It allows clients to feel comfortable with you and your product and will encourage them to return to your site for more information and eventually to buy your products.

3.       Videos

If you’re lucky enough to have someone on your staff who enjoys making videos you will be able to reach a much larger audience.   Different people have different styles of learning and many people learn best through videos.  Adding instructional or informational videos to your website will provide another kind of content for your customers.

The beauty about videos is that they work overtime for you.  Not only can you post your video directly on your website, but you can also post it on YouTube, where millions of viewers are likely to find you.  At the end of the video make sure to include your URL and direct viewers to your website for more related information.   “How to” and instructional videos are excellent to put on your site because people are always looking for information on the web.   Additionally, you can transcribe the content of the video and publish it as an article or a blog post.  Now when people search for your topic, your transcription will also be indexed, boosting your SEO.