We’ve talked in great length about how today’s consumer has the attention span shorter than that of a goldfish. Considering this, you have approximately 3 seconds for your homepage to form a good impression on viewers.
The best way to go about answering this question is to take a look at some of the more effective website design trends:
Grid or Modular Layouts
There’s no question that grid and modular layouts made a big splash in 2015, and this website design trend will most certainly continue in 2016. Why is this style so appealing? These layouts respond extremely well to different devices, which provides an optimal viewing experience for users regardless if they are accessing your website from a smartphone or desktop computer.
Go Big
To help guide your viewers to the content that you want them to see, don’t be afraid to go big. This is applicable to fonts, images, copy, whitespace, and beyond. The more impactful imagery you can use, the better. Also, brief, concise statements are much more effective than an ocean of text.
Full Width Imagery
To further emphasize our point that bigger is better, using full width imagery on your homepage’s design can be very appealing to visitors. By pairing this with minimalist navigation, the lack of clutter on your homepage will help to captive your audience and draw them in.
Here are some additional website design tips that should be taken into consideration to create a highly effective homepage:
Know Your Audience
You can use your homepage to connect with your audience on a deeper level if you take the time to develop buyer personas.
Guide Your Visitors Down an Intended Path
The best homepages are very effective with guiding their visitors towards the most relevant content.
Don’t Overwhelm Your Visitors
If you look at some examples of great homepage design, you’ll see that they share common characteristics such as minimalism and grid-based architecture to not overwhelm viewers. These website designs are very clean and make it easy for viewers to find what they’re looking for.
Use Responsive Design
Considering the number of consumers that now access the internet using mobile devices, it’s become a no-brainer to make your website mobile-friendly. This point is even further emphasized with Google’s search engine algorithm update that gives preference to mobile-friendly websites in search results. Using responsive design can help to ensure that you aren’t sacrificing the user experience on alternative devices.
To sum this up, for you to have an effective homepage that wows your audience, it’s absolutely essential that you remember that your website is for your customers. By making them the forefront of your efforts, your homepage will be a powerful contributor to your overall website.
