I’ve been reviewing home pages for the last couple of weeks and after looking at around 70 different websites I feel as though I can talk about what works and what doesn’t with a degree of authority!
Let’s look at a few basics that make a home page work effectively:
- Your brand needs to be consistent; not only on every page, but also should be recogisable as what is on your business card, letterhead and any other material you have.
- Your menu should either be horizontal, running across the page under the masthead (your identity and brand), or vertically on the left. Menus on the right don’t work – it isn’t where people naturally look for them. Horizontal menus must fit comfortably across the page on a single line. If you have too many choices to do that, don’t be tempted into a second line of choices. And it should be one menu, not one here, one there and one somewhere else!
- Your headline should occupy your prime real estate – that’s about one third of the way down the actual screen – and should start about 2inches (5 cm) in from the left hand edge. People feel uncomfortable trying to start reading from right up against the left side of the screen.
- If you’re asking people to sign up for anything give them a good reason to do so – a free report, and tell them what it is e.g. ‘Get your free report Six secrets to a successful strategy’ etc. Don’t ask for any more information than their name and email. The ideal place for a sign up box is on the right hand side, below the masthead (and menu, if it’s across the page) – and it should be part of the template so it appears on every page.
- Copy should be left aligned, in a clean sans serif font (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet) and not something busy like Times, Palatino or Garamond. Don’t justify paragraphs so all the lines are the same length – it’s hard to read – as is centred text.
- Copy should not run to more than two screens and should include a call to action in the final paragraph that appears as a hyperlink (not click here, but explore your options)
If you follow these pointers your website will be clean and attractive to the eye – and you’ll have a much better chance of keeping your reader.
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