Your Business Site: Job of the Home Page
As the page’s nickname indicates, your home page is extremely important to you. Playing with an old Tony Bennett song about San Francisco, you want your sites visitors to leave their hearts there. Okay, I’ll apologize for that.
In fact though, for most business websites, the home page is far from the most important. The page that earns the honor of being most important is probably one or two click removed from the home page. It is the one on which a converted visitor can perform an action that directly or eventually will lead to the company earing revenue. However, in most cases the home page will attract more first time visitors than any other single page on your site.
Assuming that you have followed a traditional link building plan, more external links will be directed to your home page than any other. Also, more than likely, your home page will be close to the top in terms of the number of internal links directed to it. Furthermore, if your site is not especially well designed causing your visitors to become lost in their explorations of your site, it is probably to the home page that those meandering visitors will retreat in order to get their bearings.
That simply means that your visitors will use your home page more than it might merit, although I took a circuitous route to get to that conclusion. As long as your prospects are loitering there, you better make sure you help them make good use of their time.
That brings us to our central question, which is what are the functions of a good home page in an effectively designed online business site? Here are a few functions from which you can choose, although never try to use one page to do everything.
* Serve as the foyer for your international corporate office and reflect the corporate climate, whether that is formal and efficient or relaxed and friendly.
* Allow the visitors to locate where they want to go without any unnecessary distractions. Your navigation menu will serve this function on all of your pages, but on the home page you may want to help with making suggestions concerning the most efficient ways in which they might proceed.
* Subtly and efficiently communicate the mission of your business through the copy on the page, the images, a video or some combination of all channels.
* Be explicit in explaining to your visitors what you want them to do. Don’t make them guess! You might want them to buy a product, sign up to receive valuable information, learn about the topic in which your business is the expert or even all of those.
* Make a favorable first impression by picking up the clutter; create an attractive but unpretentious space.
Those are some of the functions to consider for any business home page, regardless of whether you have a large, authority website or you are planning to build a small business website.
