Your website is your hardest-working salesperson. Or your laziest.
What a homepage has to get right, fast.
Andrew · Web designer
· 6 min read
Your website talks to more potential customers than anyone on your team. It works nights and weekends and answers the same questions all day without getting tired. Whether it sells depends on what happens in the first few seconds, before anyone scrolls.
A visitor landing on your homepage is trying to answer three questions: what is this, is it for me, and what do I do next? A homepage that answers all three quickly is doing its job. One that makes people dig for the answers is the lazy salesperson in the title.
Say what you do in plain words
The headline should describe what you sell or what you make possible. A slogan can live somewhere else on the page. If a stranger can't tell what the company does after five seconds, the headline is doing the wrong job.
Write it the way you'd explain the business to someone at dinner. Then cut it down until every word earns its place.
Show who it's for
The line under the headline, the photography and the examples should tell the right visitor they're in the right place. Name the audience or the situation: growing brands, busy clinics, first-time buyers. Being specific will turn some visitors away. The ones who stay are the ones you wanted.
If you serve a few different audiences, give each one a clear path from the homepage instead of trying to speak to all of them in one headline.
Give one next step
Pick the one action that matters most, such as booking a call, starting a trial or shopping the bestsellers, and make it the strongest button above the fold. Secondary actions can sit in the navigation or lower on the page.
Repeat the main action as the page goes on, so a visitor who is convinced halfway down doesn't have to scroll back to the top to act on it.
Put proof next to the claim
Every claim on a homepage raises a quiet “says who?” Answer it close to where the claim is made: client logos, a short review, real work, or the number of customers if it's true and current. Stock photos and words like “best-in-class” don't count as proof.
Specific proof beats general praise. A recognizable logo, a named project or a short line from a real customer does more than a paragraph about quality.
Make it fast on a phone
Many visits start on a phone, often on a slow connection. Heavy images, autoplaying video and a stack of third-party scripts all cost seconds, and visitors leave while they wait. Size images for the screen they're shown on, load what's below the fold later, and test the page on a real phone over cellular, not only on a laptop at the office. If you can only fix one thing, resize and compress the images on the first screen.
A five-second check
Before a page goes live, run through this list with someone who has never seen it.
- They can say what you sell after five seconds.
- The right visitor can tell the page is for them.
- There's one obvious next step above the fold.
- There's proof near the first claim.
- The page loads fast on a phone.
Start every website or landing page the same way: the five-second answer first, then the sections that back it up. On our side, bigger projects like full websites are broken into milestones, so you see the work as it comes together instead of waiting for one big reveal.