What to Put on the Homepage of Your Small Business Website (Quick Checklist)
Last updated: January 15, 2023
Not sure what to put on a homepage of your business website? Afraid of confusing your prospects with too much information? Wondering if you’re telling them enough?
Stop agonizing over it and use this quick checklist to create an impressive website homepage and improve your conversion rates.
Business Website Homepage Checklist
It’s tempting to put too much information on your homepage. Yet, if it doesn’t tell your visitors what you do and offers an easy way for them to discover more, they won’t stay for long.
Use these checkpoints to make sure your business homepage is as effective as possible.
Business Website Homepage “Must-Have”s
☐ A clear website tagline and a paragraph of text (if necessary) that explain:
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- Why should your target audience care? What’s the benefit?
Tip: To make sure that your website tagline is clear and easy to understand, ask yourself if you would use the same words to explain it to a potential customer in a one-on-one conversation. Will they understand it right away or need you to explain further?
When in doubt, use this surefire tagline formula: {What you are}. I {do what} {for whom} {with what benefit}.
Recommended reading: “How to Make Sure Your Homepage Sends a Clear Message (+ 7 Great Website Tagline Examples)”
☐ Navigation:
- Not more than 7 navigation labels
- Positioned as your website visitors expect it (one row at the top of the page)
- Mouse pointer changes on clickable links
- Descriptive
- Clear
Navigation Label Examples:
Vague:
- Get to Know Me
- How can I help?
- Fees & Charges
- Read My Columns
- Support yourself
- Get in Touch
Clear:
- About
- Services
- Pricing
- Blog
- Books / Courses
- Contact
Tip: Navigation is the last place you should try to be creative. Your visitors won’t read it. They’ll scan it for familiar labels. Anything that is unclear or requires them to pause and think will cause irritation or will be overlooked.
Navigation mistakes:
- Linking to unimportant pages (Impressum, Privacy policy, etc.)
- Not linking to important pages (About us, service pages, etc.)
- Placing navigation menu items in unexpected places
- Using too many navigation labels
- Unnecessary drop-down menus
Tip: Drop-down menus irritate your visitors and lose you visits to important pages. Try to reorganize the information on your website to have as few drop-down menus as possible.
Business Website Homepage “Must-Have”s (continued)
☐ Photo of yourself or your team
☐ A paragraph about yourself / your team
☐ Call to action
☐ Logo
☐ Search box
☐ Social proof
- Credible client testimonials
- Client logos
- Statistics
- Featured case studies
- Certifications
- Awards
☐ Smart footer
- Copyright
- Navigation to main pages
- Privacy policy
- Terms of use
- Contact information (address, phone number, email address)
- Link to a map
- Social media icons
- Email signup
- Search box
- Latest articles
- Call to action
Tip: You don’t have to include all these points in your footer, of course. Just select the most relevant for your business. But whatever you do, don’t leave the footer empty. Footer is a safety net of your website “catching” the visitors who haven’t found what they were looking for on your page and were about to leave.
Other things you may want to put on your business homepage:
- Selected products or services services
- Freebies
- Books
- Courses
- Featured blog posts
- Featured videos
Don’t forget about your homepage design
Your site design can make or break the user experience of your prospects. Keep in mind the following points to make sure your homepage design support your message (and doesn’t get in the way).
☐ Clear design:
- What’s important is prominent
- Logically related elements are also visually related
- Clear structure, with content organized in clearly defined areas
- Links visually stand out
- Avoid visual clutter
☐ Minimum distractions:
- Minimize the number of elements that are moving on their own
- Use pop-ups wisely
- Reduce number of ads
- No autoplay of video / audio
You may include music to give your website an audio boost, but make sure it isn’t intrusive. Using stock music can be a great way to add to your site’s atmosphere without taking away from the content.
☐ Minimum friction:
- All your text is easy to read
- All elements look like they function (i.e. plain text doesn’t look like clickable elements, clickable elements don’t look like plain text, etc.)
- All necessary information and elements – navigation, links, contact information, etc. – is easy to find
☐ Proper usage of images
- Use high-quality images
- When using images of people, avoid stock photos
- Add an image only if it helps you accomplish one of the following goals: evoke a particular emotion, break visual monotony or add additional information to the message of your copy
Tired of rewriting your About page? Agonizing over your service pages?
Get a clear roadmap as to what to write on each page (and how)
- A handy PDF with 200+ checkpoints for the most important pages of your website (including About and service pages)
- 17 additional super-specific content creation tips
- Checkpoint summary images to print out and track progress