Homepage Layout – using the customer’s expectations to your benefit

One thing we repeatedly tell all small business owners making or renewing their website is that “The homepage is not a destination, it is a starting point.” This is because people will rarely ever make their final decision on enquiring, buying, or other ‘conversion’ actions solely based on the homepage. Conversions exist where there is enough informative and persuasive communication available to validate a transaction of time, money or personal information. Because of this, your homepage needs to only have the essentials to begin the journey a user takes that gives them a mental value with your offering, bells and whistles will weigh you down. So let’s take a look into how you can translate expectations into solid answers and valuable website use through an experience-focused homepage.

What are the ‘expectations’ users have?

When someone visits your homepage either through a search engine result or a backlink, they will have a question for which they need an answer. For example, if they Google search ‘Psychology practice Surry Hills’ and click on a result that seems to match, they will want to confirm that the webpage they are taken to can match that expectation in the first few seconds. The same idea goes for if someone is expecting to find a service that ‘ticks the box’ of being cheap, nearby, fast or any other distinguishing feature. It is the role of the homepage to answer these very basic questions quickly, and then setup new expectations and questions that lead to action.
Below are some key ways to achieve this on your homepage:

 

1. Headline

This normally appears at the top or top left of the page and is a very to-the-point affirmation of what it is you do and where users are. It can tie in with your business name tagline to be efficient with your messages, or it can stand alone.

 

2. Sub-Headline

After users know they’ve come to the right place, it is good to consider using a statement to stand out a little more. You still want to keep it a ‘one-liner’ and remain short and sweet. Your unique selling proposition and biggest benefit should tie in easily here without getting too technical.

 

3. Benefits

Here is where you can give some solid reasoning as to why people should opt to go with you. Keep it short, sweet and consistent. Some key areas to address are:

• Solving common or niche problems
• Doing things faster, cheaper or at a higher quality than normal
• Having a certain amount of years of experience
• Being able to customise the product or service.

Try not to tick all of the above as benefits and overload them, or your visitors will find it difficult to remember the stand out reason to choose you. Be sure to add some connecting and supporting imagery to your claims as well.

 

4. Call to Action

Here is where you need to allow users to proceed to taking the main action you’d like them to. This should be catchy, easily understandable and clearly tie in with what they would need to do in order to become more involved. Be careful to only include one per core action and limit yourself to a couple per page or you will be asking for too much at once.
The Psych Press and Career Exchange pages give some common examples:

 

5. Features

This is where your offering is put into context and where users might find it easier to check your features against what they already expect, and then compare you to others. Individual service or product pages will have more room to go into the particulars of how something works or more features that will help persuade people, but here you only need to list the ones that make you stand out.

 

6. Testimonials

If your users come to this point and haven’t diverted to another page from your call to actions, benefits or features, then there’s a good chance they ‘get it’ but will sit on the fence. Here is where testimonials can help build some early trust and use real life experiences to match their expectations. Here it is good to have a bit of variety if you do have some positive comments from different channels such as social media, email quotes or others. Just be sure to ask the original commenter if it’s ok to use. Other pieces that are beneficial to include are relevant industry awards if applicable.

 

7. Research and Support

This is where your “keen to learn” visitors can continue to learn more about you and also have the basic information about your company. Be sure to provide phone numbers and locations, amongst links to ‘about us’ and other areas where people can continue learning about what makes you special.

 

8. Navigation

Most sites now put their main navigation at the top, centre position. This is very important to include but can often be misguided, in that webmasters place options in an odd order or put in way too many. Make sure that you prioritise what you’d like users to read and then follow through on. Another great option to use if you have many important pages but not enough room is to make a site-map on the bottom of the page. An example lies on the bottom of all Psych Press and Career Exchange pages.

 

Want to make sure you’re doing it right?

We have been optimising and upgrading homepages and other high-value webpages for several years and know how frustrating it can be to hit a wall. Thankfully we are able to get our experienced team together to help you with these time-heavy activities so that you can get it right the first time with important SEO considerations in mind, and not waste valuable hours experimenting whilst customers lose interest. Contact info@careerexchange.com.au or call 03 9670 0590 and we can chat about what challenges you’re facing.