Homepage or startpage of your website is something that gives the first impression of your company or your business on your client and as it is said ‘First Impression Lasts Long’. There are a lot of things that you need to take care while designing a home page as you may totally mess up the things, if not planned. There is always a question hammering your mind ”How to design a Homepage or a startpage..?” So here is a complete guide on how your homepage should look like.
Points to remember while designing a home page
#1. Home page should be simple yet attractive
Your startpage represents what you are, so it should not be too much messed up with the details. Try to keep it as simple as possible and never try to accommodate any extra detail that is not necessary. You should avoid using too bright and fancy colors, however, it depends on what kind of website you are designing. It is generally suggested to make your website homepage simple which enables your user to understand all in one go.
#2. Use of proper images in home page
This is a point where most of the people make a mistake, they overload their website homepage with too many images in it that make it look weird. Instead of using too many photos of models, it is advised to use somewhat original and sensible images that actually relate to your business/service/product. Using stock photos with the tags of the brands shows how unprofessional you are..! So take care that you use the images that are copyright free. You can look for photographs under the CC (Creative Commons) license which has a proper license that permits you to use or modify the images without the concern of the owner.
There are a lot of websites on the Internet wherein you can get the free images. The very well known sites are Unsplash and Death to the stock photo. Also, there are a lot of online portals wherein you can find paid high-quality images. A few of them are iStockPhoto, ShutterStock, Fotolia, etc.
You also need to take care that the images you use on your startpage are not too big in size or else it will take a time to load the images. At the same time, images should not be of a low quality that they appear dull on your website homepage.
#3 Home page should clearly mention “Who you are” and “What you are”
As described by Steven Krugg in his bestseller book “Don’t make me think”: If the user cannot identify what it is about within seconds, they won’t stick around for a longer time and you probably will lose a visitor. A new research by Chao Liu and colleagues from Microsoft Research shows that if a user passes the critical time of first 10 seconds on your website, the chances are high of your user spending some more time on your site.
Moreover, if you manage to make your user stay for at least 30 seconds, there are chances that the user will stay for an average time of 2 minutes. So make sure that you have highlighted what you are or what can a user do with your website. It does not need to be always in paragraphs, you could show it up by images or a small animation that loads quickly on your homepage.
A short loading time of a webpage would reduce bounce rates and retain more users. According to Jupiter Research, back in 2006, an average user expected your webpage to load in 3 seconds. Now, the expected time is less than 3 seconds. If your web page fails to load in this time span there are chances that you are increasing your bounce rate.
#4 Clear out a notion that your home page should look professional
The time is changing and along with that the modern trends are changing rapidly and to survive in the throat cutting competition, you need to shake hands with the latest trends. People now prefer some good catchy design rather than the old boring textual design. Catchy design in the sense that there are proper images and everything is well arranged. If you choose a design that has too much of text on it and nothing that could attract your users, you probably are planning to lose your customers. So quickly catch up something that is attractive and should be easy to understand. The major and most important task is to convey your message to the user in a proper manner.
#5 Compatible with all the devices
With the increase in the usage of mobile devices as a net browsing device, it has become mandatory for your homepage and also the entire website, to be compatible with all the devices. It should be readable on a big sized computer screen and should look equally perfect in a tablet or a mobile phone. This is what is called a ‘Responsive Website’.
According to the 2016 statistics of Hosting Facts, more than 52.7% of global internet users access the internet via mobile. The hike in the mobile internet users has been so fast and still will be. As per the projected figure by Statista more than 63.4% of the global internet traffic would be from cellular devices by the year 2019. This shows how important it is to make your website responsive.
#6. Home page should always be changing
Homepage is a startpage of your website and here you mention all the important details of your business then how could it be that you have never updated yourself since so long. This should never be the case, shoot out your latest achievements or may be the latest technology you have started working upon or may be the latest product you have developed. This way updating latest information on your homepage will help the user have a trust that ‘Yes..! You are growing…’
These are the things that you need to take care while designing a homepage or a startpage for your website. Hope this is a to the point answer to your question of how to design a homepage for your website.
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