Many business owners spend thousands of dollars on designing a website, but fail to lay out an effective home page that captures visitor attention and maximizes their conversion rate.

When starting to design a rough layout of the home page, thousands of ideas start flying out, ranging from color schemes, number of pages, slogans, specials, copy, certifications, accreditations, and many more. Usually, after this long brainstorming session, it becomes very difficult to derive a concise, effective layout for the home page without all the clutter.

In order to design an effective home page and maximize a business’s return on investment, prior to laying it out, the business owner should clearly define the purpose of the home page and consider the following:

• Upon landing on the home page, the website must communicate a clear message of the products or services offered by the business.
• Websites must provide a brief summary of the top 5 products or services offered.
• The home page should have an easy navigational structure to allow potential clients explore the secondary pages of the website.
• The company’s contact information, including phone number, address and email, should be clearly displayed. Don’t make your potential customers go on a scavenger hunt.
• Incorporate the company logo, slogans and a summary of existing marketing efforts into the layout.
• Develop the overall design and feel of the website to reflect the company’s brand image and marketing plan.
• Incorporate a call to action on the home page to maximize the conversion rate.

At times, it is hard to determine all the necessary information to include on the home page and at the same time not to overwhelm visitors. But, having a clearly defined home page mission makes a great start towards producing an effective home page layout. If it takes your website visitor 8 seconds to develop an opinion regarding your business, it’s extremely important to take all the steps necessary to ensure that your home page layout has your customer’s needs in mind, and, in turn, leads to high conversion rates.