About this lesson
Learn the uses of a homepage for a website and how the page content best welcomes visitors to the business site, and directs them.
Exercise files
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Landing and Home Pages.docx61 KB Landing and Home Pages - Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Topic
Learn the uses of a homepage for a website and how the page content best welcomes visitors to the business site, and directs them.
When to use
When creating or revising content for a business site homepage.
Instructions
Purpose
Typical purpose of a business homepage:
- Online companies: face to the world
- Service businesses: help users
- Brick and mortar: reveal site content
- Give visitors a good reason to stay!
Content
- Focus on the website’s purpose: is it to make sales, validate, entice, educate?
- Welcome visitors and present a clear tagline or statement of benefit
- Write to funnel users towards the best place for their purpose or interest: high-priority tasks
- Reveal the rest of the site’s content: links, lists or excerpts
- Write links as action items: start with verb/lead to result where appropriate
- Offer social proof, testimonials from customers
- Keep company information grouped
- 00:05 Next let's learn the uses of a home page for a website and how the page content best welcomes visitors to the business
- 00:13 and directs them.
- 00:16 When creating or revising content for a business home page
- 00:21 keep in mind just how important it is.
- 00:25 For online companies your home page is your face to the world.
- 00:30 For service businesses what better place to begin helping users.
- 00:36 For brick and mortar business, just like your front door, your home page is where you begin to reveal what's behind the rest of your site.
- 00:48 And for any business you want your home page to give visitors a reason to stay and look around.
- 00:57 A home page is the beginning of the purpose of the rest of your website. You want to focus on
- 01:02 your website's purpose as you construct your home page.
- 01:08 What are you trying to do with your site? Are you making sales, are you validating your
- 01:15 professional qualities, are you enticing your audience to read the rest of your work, are you educating?
- 01:22 First and foremost you're welcoming visitors to your site
- 01:27 and you'll usually want to do that by presenting a clear statement of a benefit now that they've gotten there, also known as a tagline. On the
- 01:36 previous screen we used GoSkills top of their home page and their tagline is "GoSkills provides
- 01:43 personal online courses for professional development."
- 01:49 It's clear, it's concise and it's beneficial.
- 01:54 Your home page should funnel users to the best place for their purpose or interest and you want
- 02:00 to focus on high priority tasks. So there will be possibly a few choices for them,
- 02:07 but these are the places that you're hoping to direct them,
- 02:11 and you know they're interested in going as your audience members. A great example here is
- 02:18 Exercise Files and Cheat Sheets: people can check out some of the elements of a GoSkills course
- 02:25 from the home page or they can choose sign up now.
- 02:31 Reveal site content with
- 02:34 links, lists and excerpts, that's also done with all these icons and sections on GoSkills home page.
- 02:45 Write links as action items.
- 02:48 Again, sign up now or find as online... It takes your web site visitor
- 02:55 to the the next place in an actionable term that they can understand
- 03:01 quickly.
- 03:04 Offer social proof and testimonials.
- 03:07 This is a way to build trust with new visitors quickly. Social proof means things like
- 03:13 as seen in better homes and gardens, or as seen on TV.
- 03:17 Testimonials are as shown here
- 03:20 "great lessons very detailed" These are customers are other professionals
- 03:25 who are willing to give you quotes or excerpts from their positive reviews of your work.
- 03:33 And finally keep company information grouped
- 03:37 There should be one area on your site and on the homepage is a common place because you'll have usually a footer area at the bottom
- 03:47 where people can figure out a way to contact you if they're interested or find you online.
- 03:53 You want to keep it all together because if someone's ready to reach out to you or purchase something
- 03:59 they should be up to do it quickly.
- 04:01 All in all your homepage needs to be remembered as the first introduction to the
- 04:06 purpose of your entire site possibly your entire business,
- 04:11 and a very welcoming way to present
- 04:14 a clear benefit and a directional map for your online visitors.
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