Home Pages: Designing Profitable Websites Part 2

Home pages are typically seen as the bread and butter for most organizations, however most of these "bread and butter" pages have appalling visitor statistics. The average abandonment rate is around 40% - 60% and this rate trickles down affecting the rest of the site. A little work to a home page can go a long way increasing goals and conversions along the way.

We are all taught to never judge a book by its cover and unfortunately this does not play into web design. Within a matter of seconds visitors will decide if your site is what they are looking for and if not they will quickly move on. When designing a home page take the following recommendations into consideration to drive traffic past the home page and increase goals and conversions.

Capture a wide audience.

Home pages must be attractive to everyone. This includes customers, the media, shareholders, colleagues, employees, and etc. It is of value to address all of these audiences without turning the home page into a tangled mess. Not addressing or confusing any audience will push them to abandon the page. (For targeting specific audiences see part 1 of this series about landing pages.)

Landing Pages: Designing Profitable Websites Part 1

Landing pages are specially crafted web pages aimed at convincing visitors to take a specific action, and overall increase conversions. These actions can include making a purchase, filling out a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, downloading an application, or so forth.

Perfecting a landing page takes time. A few instructions and suggestions to keep in mind when designing and perfecting a landing page include:

Give your landing page a unique layout and design, separate from the original website.

This is perhaps the most important step. Stripping away some of the features from a full site has proven to increase conversions by not allowing visitors to have any option but to perform the desired action.

The Master Plan to a Prosperous Website

When thinking of web design the term design can be relatively vague. The reason being that much of web design consist of strategy, including everything from content writing and text arrangement to design appearance and representation. When all of the different elements of web design come together correctly it creates a website that is visually appealing as well as accessible and practical to all users.

It is no small task putting all of these elements together, and in doing so you need to have a plan. Establishing a plan will allow you to focus on your objectives and work towards them accordingly.