Do you ever feel that your homepage design sucks? Do you ever feel that your competitor has a better website design then you do? Do you ever consider redoing the website and then getting lost about the ideas on building a new design, inclusions, exclusions etc? Here is a guide for all the website owners, marketers, website makers. Complete explanation to all your questions and after reading this article you can certainly say, What did you find that was helpful to you in this article in improving the website. With that said, the article goes as follows…
The homepage of any website depicts its basic function and speaks about the business it belongs to. Most of the marketer and website makers have the idea in their minds of making their website look best and serve their users.
While making website some of the companies and marketers ask these questions to themselves and whatsoever they get the answer, accordingly they design their website and the homepage.
- How to make my website a memorable experience for the user
- How can I be sure of the visitors visiting my website shall stick to it and also revisit?
- How can I be assured of the visitors to dig into the content on the site and look around the products/services mentioned on it?
- How do I make sure that the visitors shall take out their time and contact us through phone, email or the enquiry forms being put up on the website?
If you seriously look at the above mentioned questions you can get the idea of ‘how to build the website’s appearance according to the owner’s perspective”. It doesn’t count what the user wants! What are the requirements a user has when they visit a website?
For this the perspective should be of the users while designing the website and its home page.
DON’Ts for the Homepage Design
The best ways to grab the attention of the users of your website is to understand their needs and the reason why they should visit your website. Here are some of the enquiries we get on regular basis about building the websites.
- How can I have my website look better and in-fact it should look like the xyz.com, can you work this out for us?
- I need to know the price to redo my present website, also see the link mentioned here and revert.
- We want to upgrade our old website; can you help us by any means?
- I wish to have my website much more professional, is there anything you can do to improvise it?
- Can you suggest me some changes on my website and help me make it much better?
So, with such queries, we deal everyday! Everyone wants their website to look better, much better and the best and but all these according to their own perspective. Not many consider the perspective of their visitors, and here is the real trouble!
Have you ever asked yourself?
- Who are the visitors of your websites?
- What are the issues the visitors have when they visit the website?
- Are the services/products offered on the websites are relevant to their problems and are even seen by them?
- How the visitors can be in touch with each other and discuss the concerns from which I can generate a feedback for my website?
- Is the content on the website is appealing enough to the visitors and are they finding a solutions to their requirements?
- Are the visitors able to reach me easily through the contact details on the website? If no, then how to make this much easier?
So, after asking these questions, you can have an overview of the visitor’s requirement and exactly what they are looking for and what they are getting from your website. Now you can take these questions and implement them in making your website a much better one for your visitors. If the questions are not answered by your website in a proper manner, you need a refresh!
Essential Elements for Website Refresh
There are several elements being put up in the core design of any website. Below we have compiled some of the key elements for a website homepage design.
Elements needed for a Website Header
- Logo
- Tagline
- Search box
- Navigation menu – Primary (redirected to other core pages)
- Social media icons and/or references
- Navigation menu – Secondary (account or login)
Elements needed for a Core Home Page
- Static Image or Flash image
- Video
- Site introduction
- Primary basic content
- Personal call out
- Promotions/deals
- Blog posts
- Upcoming events (if any)
Elements needed for a Website Footer
- Contact information
- Widgets
- Sitemap, terms and conditions
- Disclaimers and policies
- Copyright or legal notices
This might be inspiring? Yes, it is inspiring! Also, it is understood that this is too much for any new client to answer all these mentioned in the list, rather they can try out at-least a few of them and get the response from their target visitors. Don’t forget to drop some lines and give us your valuable feedback on this article.
