Your online store’s front page or homepage is the most important piece of real estate on your site. Here credibility must be established for both your store “brand” and for the products you sell. Here you engage users to shop and buy.
An Emotional and Intellectual Response
Within the first seconds of viewing (some say a fraction of a second), you must elicit a positive emotional and intellectual response from your visitor which will determine whether he or she will engage or click elsewhere.
A favourable response is produced by a pleasant mix of the following design elements:
- Appealing colour palette
- Identifiable imagery
- Consistent typography
- Breathing space or white space rather than clutter
Visual noise and confusion are so pervasive in the online world that a store with good design is a refreshing oasis. Order, beauty and clarity are the antidotes to chaos and confusion. Trust is the antidote to fear.
The visitor arrives with this implicit question: “Is this a site I trust?” The objective of good home page design is to help a visitor conclude, “Yes, this is a store I’d like to explore further. I would feel safe making a purchase from this store.”
“Above the Fold”
Think of your homepage as being divided into two zones: above and below the “fold.” “Above the fold” is a newspaper term that refers to the part of the screen that your visitor can see without scrolling. This screen must create a first impression that will make your visitor want to keep exploring your site. It must be “tight” and credible. Here are some guidelines:
- Build your store brand with a logo and value proposition tagline.
- Maximise space while providing landmarks for key brand and navigation elements.
- Define major categories clearly. Categories should be easy to read and expandable if there are subcategories under the top level categories. Your menu of categories is analogous to a book’s table of contents.
- Make your product search easy to find, since this is the next step for many visitors.
- Actively engage the visitor with motion. Flash or JavaScript modules that rotate banners on the page will help you to achieve this.
When your store’s homepage is designed carefully — and then tested — it can improve conversions throughout the entire store.
