Small Steps To Stay On Track - Home Page

If you are anything like me, it is about this time in the year that you realize you aren't sticking to your New Year's Resolutions.  I start off the year with so many goals and ambitions, but I realize that by trying to take on everything at once, I end up failing on most of my goals.  So what I propose is to relax a bit, and take those New Year's Resolutions one step at a time.  This series of blog posts will take various elements on your website and evaluate the good vs the bad. You can make improvements to your website one section at a time.

Home Page
The home page on your website introduces your company to potential clients, advertises your top products and promotions, and gives information on the various categories in your store.  With those three goals in mind, your home page should have some of the following features:

• Clear call to action.  This may be a current promotion or sale, a top product, or a seasonal product line.  Whatever it is, have one, and only one, clear call to action that you change periodically.  You want your customers to come back and see what's new in your store.
• Full navigation. Have your page setup so that either in your top navigation, side navigation or footer navigation, customers can go directly to what they want.  With ShopSite you can create categories or top navigation fly-out menus so that customers can find the main category (for example, Women's Clothes), and view a list of sub categories (such as Shirts or Tops) to go directly where they want.
• Links to additional resources. You are an active business owner so you'll have Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs, newsletters or other ways to keep in touch with your customers.  Let your new customers know that you are current with many online resources. 

A few things to watch out for that could hurt your home page are the following:

• Too many calls-to-action. Trying to pull your customers in 5 different directions could distract customers or overwhelm customers. If a customer comes to your website with a purpose, for example to buy pants, they will look at your navigation and find exactly where they want to go.  If a customer finds your website some other way, direct them with one call-to-action.  If you want to direct them to more than that, have your additional features (such as other best sellers or promotions) highlighted as cross selling items on another page, not all on your home page.

• Slow Speed. Your home page should be the attention grabber, but a slow loading page does not grab attention.  Make sure that your home page is clean and loads quickly. 

On the right I have the home page of four popular brands, Apple.com, VictoriasSecret.com, Nike.com and Columbia.com. You can see that each of these home pages has one main call-to-action.  Apple.com is advertising their iPhone 4S; VictoriasSecret.com is advertising their swim line; Nike.com is advertising their new sport band; Columbia.com is advertising their waterproof shoes. With each of these sites, the main thing they are advertising will take up nearly all the space 'above the fold' when viewing.  In order to view the categories below, a customer would need to scroll down.