Creating an effective homepage is simple: Use these 7 elements and… that’s it!
You are smart. Hard-working. Creative.
You are tough enough to run your own business.
But when it comes to your homepage, you black out. Freeze. Become color blind.
You use thousands of colorful images and buttons threatening your visitors with an epileptic stroke.
You use a red font on an orange background.
You put all possible crap in never-ending paragraphs in the main section of your homepage and refuse to tell people what it is that you do unless they scroll for 5 miles and use a magnifying glass to read the fine print in the footer.
And then you wonder why your website isn’t getting you any clients!
This changes now.
7 Elements of a Crazy Effective Homepage
You only need these 7 elements to create an effective homepage – a homepage that makes a good impression on your prospects, keeps them longer on your website and helps them to convert.
Element #1. Call to Action
Decide on one main thing you’d like people who visit your homepage do. Add a visually prominent button to your header section above the fold.
Call to action examples:
- Get in touch
- Find out more
- Book a free session
- Grab this free ebook
- Sign up (for a free course)
- Sign up (for updates)
Element #2. Who Are You? What Do You Do?
Your visitors must be able to immediately tell who you are and what you do. How else are they supposed to decide whether your services & products are something they need?
Make sure your homepage sends a clear message: Use descriptive website tagline and be specific and clear about your area of expertise.
Examples:
- Becky White, Wedding Photography
- Mark Olson, B2B Blogger and Copywriter
Element #3. Why Should They Care?
Even your best friend won’t hire you if he doesn’t understand why she needs your services. Give your visitors a strong reason to care about what you have to offer by highlighting the benefits.Examples:
- Grow your audience with smart content marketing.
- Your Virtual Assistant: Do what you love. I’ll take care of the rest.
Element #4. Your Photo
They say it’s better one time to see than 100 times to hear. Show your visitors that you are nice and likable human being. This will help them get to know, like and trust you faster.
Element #5. Clear Navigation
What if your visitors are not ready to follow that call to action just yet and want to learn more about you first? Clear and intuitive navigation will encourage them to find out more about your work.
Examples of clear navigation labels:
- About
- Services
- Portfolio
- Blog
- Courses
- Books
- Contact
- Search
Element #6. Social Proof
Nothing makes your visitors trust you faster than rock-solid social proof. Include anything that boosts your credibility as soon as possible on your homepage.
Examples of social proof:
- Testimonials
- Client logos
- Awards
- Certifications
- “As seen on…”
Element #7. Smart Footer
You cannot possibly read the mind of every visitor and offer her all the things she could be looking for on your homepage. But you can use your footer to place important links and information to catch her before she decides to leave your website.
Examples of things to put in your footer:
- Logo
- Privacy policy
- Copyright
- Navigation
- Social icons
- Postal address
- Phone number
- Email sign-up
- Search box
- Latest articles
![Creating an Effective Homepage: 7 Elements You Shouldn't Miss [Infographic]](https://gillandrews.com/wp-content/uploads/7-elements-to-create-effective-homepage-2.png)
- Make everything easy to read using large enough font size
- Make sure your web texts are properly formatted
- Avoid visual clutter
- Use proper visual hierarchy white designing your page layout: Enough white space, what’s important is visually prominent, logically related elements are also visually related, etc.
What Else Can You Put on Your Homepage?
These are the 7 crucial elements of a crazy effective homepage that you can’t miss. But you can surely put more things on your homepage to help your readers get to know, like and trust you faster, and/or feature selected product and services.
More things to put on your homepage:
- Personal introduction
- Selected services
- Freebies
- Books
- Courses
- Featured posts
- Featured videos
Want to impress with your homepage even more?
Use these practical tweaks for smart business owners to polish your copy and design (and start getting new client inquiries on autopilot).
You have shared a really good article, Thanks for this.
Very good article shared, thanks for this.
Very good information shared, thanks for this.
Very interesting and informative article. Thanks for share such type of precious article.
Great content! Very straightforward! I am building a website for my printing company right now, and this piece really gave me a direction. Thanks a lot!
Thanks, Arthur. Glad you found it useful. The tips in this article are rather for a freelancer homepage. If you’d like some website tips that apply to a company website, you may found these articles more helpful:
Very informative and helpful for beginners. Thanks a lot. I just added a subscription form on the cover of the home page. Found the link through a tweet from Semrush.
Thank you for your kind words, Mathukutty. Glad you liked the article.
Thank you.
I am starting a new business building websites. I was already doing most of this, but It’s nice to have this checklist.
My pleasure. Glad you found it useful, Alain.
Hi Gill: you have written a very useful guide. I have favorited it and i will recommend it. Thank you
I think my new homepage has these elements 🙂
Thank you Gill
http://ErnoHannink.nl
I will follow my stats carefully and look for improvement.
Hi Erno. Congratulations! This means you’ve successfully passed “Freelancer Homepage Level 1”. To the “Freelancer Homepage Level 2”, this way >> https://gillandrews.com/freelancer-homepage-checklist-template/ 😀
Enjoyed this post… a lot! 😉
Both visually appealing and to the point with a powerful message on how to make the homepage appealing for that crucial lead we all want.
Also Gill, many marketers use this as a ‘foot in the door’ service offer to their clients, hence the reason why you might not find many write ups about it (as you mentioned to Andrew).
Also love the fact how your posts are currently trending in short sentences and, in storytelling format. Exactly what big G wants hey? Nice!
Hi there, Isabel 🙂 Happy to hear you found this post useful! Funny story: This post indeed brought me at least one long-term client.
Haha @ “big G”. Please don’t tell me my bathroom scales is tweeting updates into the world now 😄. I had no idea I’m trending for short sentences and storytelling format! Thanks for letting me know. I wasn’t aiming for that but I guess it’s a pleasant side effect when the general SEO strategy is working.
Speaking of homepages: If you have one you want to perform better, I recently created a quiz called “How good is your homepage?” which is a thorough self-assessment that will give you a more detailed picture of the state of your homepage and how you could improve things. You can take it here (if you dare, as the results won’t be sugarcoated 😄).
Thanks for reading and taking time to leave a comment! Comments are a blogger’s best friends 🙂 Have a lovely day.
This was a great post.
Getting the messaging right is tough but crucial.
I’m not the biggest fan of copywriting. I seem to write much better for clients and other people and waffle complete nonsense for my own site and content. I tend to to just keep writing words until I can’t see through the font fog anymore.
Time to strip it back to basics I think. Thanks for the great tips
– Dan
Hi Dan. Thank you for your kind words 🙂
“Not seeing through the font fog”. Exactly. It’s more difficult to write copy for yourself. Because you know the subject too well, your brain fills in the blanks making you think your copy is clear, when in fact it’s not.
Glad you found these tips helpful.
This is so true. Sometimes I fill in so many of the gaps that I miss the core point of the message “that it gets these kinds of results” or “achieves this thing more easily” etc.
Getting a different perspective can definitely help in these situations.
I think people forget how important the actual copy is. From my experience, it’s usually the main reason why people bounce (besides really terrible UX)
– Dan
Hey Gill,
Great post.
First of all, if someone puts red font on an orange background, I’m never going back to that site again because I’m not straining my eyesight.
I think element 3 is really important. If you can’t prove to them why they should care and what you can ultimately do for them, they won’t even consider you.
– Andrew
Hey Andrew. Thanks! 🙂 Because the majority of the articles I read are about website optimization, it’s easy to get used to the neat websites that look & work great (I’m guessing for you it’s the same). But the truth is, there are a lot of people out there who are really good doing their business, but are, to put it mildly, less good in deciding what works and what doesn’t on a website. I’m still surprised by the things I see on clients’ websites 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!