Is Your Homepage Killing Your Conversion Rate?
 Your homepage carries a heavy burden. It often holds brand strategies, corporate communications initiatives, and every marketing and sales message in your company.
However, by trying to serve the needs of all of your constituencies, the homepage is failing to serve any. More likely than not, you see your homepage as a red carpet of sorts; inviting visitors and prospects into your company and service. But the view from a visitor perspective is much different . Everyone who comes to your website has a specific task in mind. But when your homepage is too cluttered, cute or confusing, consumers become frustrated, annoyed and lost. That leads to missed opportunities.
Your homepage will likely be your visitors' first step towards conversion, or Awareness. It needs to capture the visitors' attention then quickly move them towards Interest, then Desire (Decision), then Action. The sooner they get closer to their specific reason for visiting, the better.
Let's look at the mind-set of visitors during the awareness stage. After first arriving at your site, their level of commitment is very low and they may click away at any moment. They are looking fore reassurance, recognition of their needs and a clear path to follow.
Consider these three rules of Web awareness:
- If the visitor can't find something easily, it doesn't exist.
- If you emphasize too many items, all of them lose importance.
- Any delay increases frustration.
Often, companies try to emphasize too many items on the homepage and what they end up with is a confusing and jumbled mess. If you emphasize everything, nothing will be important. This will destroy your visitors' ability to find key information and paralyze them from making a decision.
What should you do?
Take an inventory of your homepage. What are all the things you are trying to communicate with your homepage? Then think of your business model. What is the single most important thing you are trying to accomplish with your business? How is that reflected on your homepage? It should be your top priority. Your homepage should contain mission-critical content. You first want visitors to focus on the primary goal of your website. One way to accomplish this is to reduce the number of available options so that users stay focused on their intent, and that the homepage design mimics their thought sequence.
An extreme example of this concept is www.google.com. Google knows why you're visiting and they understand the primary goal of the Google website.
Forget cool. Design your homepage to convert.
Unless a visual element directly supports a key conversion action, it should be removed. Common over-the-top visual elements include vivid background colors and giant photo billboards, distracting text treatments in headlines and buttons, unnecessary animation or video. Photos of people can be especially distracting, because they immediately draw our attention and easily overshadow the conversion action.
When it comes to your homepage design, follow this important tip: Use visual elements only to focus visitors on a small number of initial objectives, so they are not confused about what they can do on your site.
Your goal is to lighten the load of your homepage. Stay focused on creating a simple environment for visitors to absorb your message and take action. Ultimately, conversion will always trump cool, and a clear and simple homepage design will generate an increased rate that will translate to measurable bottom-line increases.
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