A clean, attention-grabbing, and well-organized homepage is often the key to making a good first impression. Think of it this way: in a job interview, most interviewers will first notice what you’re wearing. Your outfit isn’t as important as what you say in the interview, but it could be the swaying factor between two very close candidates.

When a potential client or customer visits your business’s website, the homepage can be enough to encourage or deter them from exploring other pages or reaching out to work with you. So, design matters! Check out these tips for building your business website’s homepage.

Incorporate current website trends into your theme

Did you know that there are new web design trends every year? It’s true! Take dark mode, for example; have you noticed that everyone has started including a dark mode in 2021? That’s a top web design trend this year, both for accessibility and aesthetic purposes. The inclusion of white space is also popular these days. (October Dreams Marketing follows this trend!)

Other trends include retro fonts, pastel colors, augmented reality (AR) experiences. Check out more trends on Webflow and TheeDigital!

While you don’t want to completely blend in with the crowd, the truth is that many people are attracted to trends. So, you’ll want to incorporate trends to an extent. For example, you can stick to a dark color scheme if that’s in your branding guidelines, but maybe you can add in some pastel accents.

Take inspiration from other websites, even beyond your industry

This sort of falls in line with keeping up with the trends, but don’t be afraid to check out other sites for inspiration. You don’t even have to stick to your industry; any website that catches your eye will do! Just make some notes of what you like and don’t like, especially from a consumer’s perspective. This will help you find a design you and your clientele will enjoy.

Include relevant imagery

Don’t forget to break up all that text with some photos! The more relevant and specific these images are to your company, the better. So, it might benefit you to do a brand photoshoot, where you can have a photographer take some personalized “stock” images for your website. Alternatively, you can use images from sites like Pexels or Pixabay. Photos from any company events will work well, too!

Consider a scrolling home page rather than a single block

You can set your homepage up to be more click-oriented or more scroll-oriented. A click-oriented page will have less information on it in favor of keeping everything concise and organized into menu items. Meanwhile, a scrolling page will, of course, make you scroll. A scrolling page is actually beneficial for a few reasons.

For one thing, scrolling is faster for consumers than navigating a menu and clicking on the page that makes sense. Additionally, from an SEO standpoint, this is a great opportunity to organize everything by subheadings with specific keywords included.

Now, you don’t have to go too crazy — you can still include a menu linking to additional pages, but put brief summaries of key information on your homepage. For example, you can include a subheading and a paragraph with a brief summary of your services. Under another subheading, quick pricing facts. It’s up to you!

Know what people are looking for and organize accordingly

Think like a customer. What information would they be looking for? Make sure you either link to the right place for that information or include it in a noticeable spot on your homepage.

Contact October Dreams Marketing for more website-building tips.