Brand5 min read
Your homepage has one job
Most homepages try to say everything and end up saying nothing. The fix is subtraction, and it starts with one question.
Published
A homepage is not a brochure and it is not a table of contents. It answers one question for a stranger: am I in the right place? Everything else on the page is competing with that.
The four seconds
Someone arrives, usually from a search or a link, with a specific need. If the first screen does not confirm that you do the thing they need, in a place they can reach, they leave. That is the whole test.
- What you do, in plain words — not a slogan.
- Where you do it, if location matters at all.
- One obvious next step: call, book, or get a quote.
- One reason to believe you — a rating, a real photo, a named client.
What to cut
The rotating banner, the mission statement, the stock photo of a handshake, the paragraph beginning “In today's fast-paced world”. None of them answer the question, and each one pushes the answer further down.
If a visitor has to scroll to find out what you sell, the page has already failed.
A useful exercise: write the homepage as three sentences first. If those three sentences do the job, the design's only task is to not get in their way.
