How To Avoid The 3 Most Common Homepage Website Design Mistakes

No matter what your company does and what product or service you offer, your homepage is the most crucial part of your website. It’s the first place your visitors and potential customers will go to experience you, and it’s probably your most visited page on your site, so getting it right is essential. Despite this, there are still millions of businesses who get it wrong, and doing so can be damaging. Here’s how you can make sure to avoid those mistakes.

The fold

This archaic newspaper slang is used in the web design world to indicate the area of a web page that can be accessed without scrolling. There was once a popular belief that content ‘below the fold’ of a website’s homepage was redundant as it would get far fewer views. Therefore many organisations chose to pull out all the stops for the area of their pages ‘above the fold’ in design and content and leave the rest of the page looking average at best.

With the internet being viewed on a multitude of screen sizes, there really is no such thing as a ‘fold’ anymore. The term is outdated, and homepages now should be designed to use all the space needed to properly wow the visitor.

Too much Information

Bounce rates are high on the homepage, and its intent should purely be to introduce your ethos to your visitor and act as the start of a fluid and intuitive user journey to your most important pages.

As the starting point of your website, the homepage needs the most minimal amount of content. It’s not always, as many believe, the shop window, showing all your wares to your virtual passers-by. It is instead the threshold of your site, enticing users to come in and see more. Opt for a stripped-down homepage with an image or video and bold, statement text that says in a sentence who you are, what you do and why your visitors should work with you.

Calls-to-action/CTAs

Adding calls-to-action on your homepage might be obvious, but too many companies seem to forget exactly what their website is for. It’s no good having the most beautifully designed website in the world if it doesn’t perform the function it was designed for. Many designers will pack away the navigation and other useful information in a burger menu to the side of the screen for neatness, but this can be counterintuitive.

Site visitors are usually coming to your site looking for something, and if they can’t find it right away, most will give up and look somewhere else. Whether it’s a ‘Shop Now’ or a ‘Call us’ button, make sure your call-to-action is obvious from the word go.