Are you having trouble attracting visitors to your website and getting them to stay? Is your website homepage design ineffective? Well, you are reading the right article! Having a good-looking, effective website homepage design is essential! It is the first page that visitors see, so you want to make it as eye-catching as possible.

To achieve this, you have to think about what a user visiting your website would want from it. An excellent way to do this is to put yourself into the user’s shoes. When you visit your website, what would you want it to look like? Is it easy to navigate through the site? By looking at the first page, do you know what the purpose of the website is? Is it easy to navigate from the homepage to the page with the information you are looking for? When I visit a website, I want to find what I’m looking for and find it quickly. Let’s discuss a few ways to create an effective website homepage design.

Website homepage design: 9 things to keep in mind

1. Purpose

Keep the purpose of your business and website clear on the homepage. Always cater to the needs of the users. Every page, but most importantly the homepage, should fulfil a specific need for your users in the most effective way possible.

2. Communication

Users want information quickly, so it is important to provide simple, direct and straight-to-the-point information. Essentially communicate your message clearly and make your info easy to read and digest.

3. Typography

When it comes to fonts, you want to go with a font that is easy to read. Around 15 to 17px is an ideal font size, as it is easy to read online. The most important thing with typography is to keep things consistent. Consistency is key to having a good looking website design.

4. Colour

A well thought out colour palette can go a long way to enhance user experience. Choose a colour scheme that not only provides the homepage and website with a great look, but is also easier on the eye when reading. Here are some key factors to consider when choosing a colour scheme:

• Vibrant colours create emotion and should be used sparingly (e.g. for buttons and call to actions).
• White space/negative space is very effective at giving your website a modern and uncluttered look.

5. Images

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: “a picture can speak a thousand words”. So having images and choosing the correct images can help you to connect with your target audience. Nobody likes a text-heavy website homepage design. Also, consider using:

• Infographics
• Videos
• Graphics

These can be a lot more effective and attention-grabbing than a written piece of text.

6. Navigation

Navigation refers to how easy it is for people to interact with and explore your website. A few tactics to achieve effective navigation would be:

• A logical page hierarchy
• Having clickable buttons
• Using breadcrumbs

7. Grid-based layouts

It’s a good idea to arrange content into digestible sections. Adding content into boxes and columns gives the design a more balanced look, which leads to a much better-looking homepage website design.

8. Load time

This is important. No one enjoys waiting for a page to load. The ideal way to solve this is to:

• Optimise images
• Minify HTML, CSS and Javascript
• Combine code into central CSS or Javascript

9. Mobile friendly

Nowadays websites are accessed from multiple devices with different screen sizes. The ideal option is to build a mobile-responsive website (this means your website will easily adjust to different screen widths).

See… it’s easy to have an effective website homepage design. It’s the small things you need to consider when creating a useful, memorable homepage and website for your visitors. Call us today if you would like some web development assistance for your business.