Optimise for better conversion rates

Your home page is key to making a great first impression with your customers, so making it appealing, interesting and informative are all essential elements of customer engagement. However, it’s important not to just rely on these elements and ensure that your homepage is fully optimised to ensure that users are converted into paying customers. But how do you go about optimising your homepage?      

It's important to have clear, concise navigation with a rule of thumb being that all pages on your website should be no more than 3 clicks deep into your navigation.  

Navigation is one of the most important factors in optimising your homepage and if it isn’t clear or is overloaded with links a user is likely to become confused and frustrated and will leave your website immediately.

Therefore, by implementing search engine optimisation (SEO) practices you’ll be on your way to equipping your website with the essential tools to aid conversions.  To do this firstly ensure that your homepage is structured correctly using the appropriate heading tags. For example, your page should have a Heading 1 (H1) tag at the top of the page and any subheadings should be using H2s, H3s etc.  This allows Google to read your pages, understand its structure and use this along with other factors to determine your ranking status. It's essential that all headings on your website are appropriately tagged for optimisation.

Meta titles and descriptions are also key as they are what users see in a search engine results page (SERPs) and will be the determining factor to whether someone will click through to your site. It’s extremely important to include your primary keyword in both of these as this will help Google match your page with a customer query. In Umbraco (our CMS of choice due to it being user friendly and having great flexibility) the CMS ensures that there is an SEO-specific area for you to fully optimise your pages with the correct meta titles and descriptions.

Whilst you need to ensure your meta title and descriptions include a keyword, it’s essential the keyword you choose is accurate to what a user can expect from your page. Therefore, ensure that your keywords answer the questions your users are looking for as if you don’t this will negatively impact your bounce rate as you won’t be answering the question users are looking for.

Furthermore, your homepage needs to have a purpose and it’s important not to overload it with too much content about who you are and what the company does. This level of detail can be part of your product pages or about us section. Instead treat your homepage as your entry point for first time users. Be clear and concise with your messaging and ensure that you include relevant call to actions (CTA’s).  Limiting the number of pages your homepage pushes users should be kept to a minimum so ideally 1-2 pages is ideal, but ensure that your CTA’s are included throughout the homepage. Keeping your design templates simple and making sure you’re consistent throughout is key to having a fully optimised homepage. 

Design is also essential to improve conversion rates as if your website is poorly designed you will see a high bounce rate as users will go elsewhere.  Layout, images, font, and mobile responsiveness, all play key roles in making a well-designed website a great one. Therefore, as a rule, keep it simple, don’t go over the top, utilise white space and keep content minimal so to entice your users to want to learn more.  Mobile first design has huge benefits as well as providing a better user experience as most website traffic now comes via mobile.   

In essence your homepage should make it clear what users can expect to find on your website and feature your unique selling points. With relevant links to the most important pages and a focus on SEO best practices, you’ll have a fully optimised homepage from the outset. 

If you’d like to refresh your website talk to us.