Strategy
What Belongs on a Homepage, and What's Just Taking Up Room
By the LA Web Design team6 min read
Most homepages are built the way a business thinks about itself: history first, services somewhere in the middle, contact at the bottom. Visitors read in the opposite order. They want to know what you do, whether you're any good, and what happens next.
Answer “what is this” above the fold
The top of the page needs a plain sentence saying what you do and who you do it for. Not a slogan. Someone who has never heard of you should read one line and know whether they're in the right place. If your headline would work just as well on a competitor's website, it isn't doing its job.
Proof, early and specific
Logos, reviews, numbers, real project photos — whatever shows that other people trusted you and it worked out. Specific beats impressive: “400 floors installed across the Western Slope” lands harder than “industry-leading quality.” Put at least one piece of proof where people see it without scrolling far.
One obvious next step, repeated
Decide the single action you want most — a call, a form, a booking — and make it the loudest thing on the page. Then repeat it as the visitor scrolls. A homepage with five equally weighted buttons doesn't have a call to action. It has a menu.
Services, in customer words
List what you do in the language customers use, and link each one to a real page with real detail. Short summaries on the homepage, depth on the service pages. This is also how search engines work out what to rank you for.
What you can usually cut
The welcome paragraph about being passionate about quality. The stock photo of a handshake. The mission statement. The rotating carousel — almost nobody reaches the second slide, and it slows the page down. The long company history, which belongs on the About page where the people who care about it will go looking for it.
A five-second test
Pull the homepage up on a phone and give it to someone who doesn't know your business for five seconds. Then ask them what you do and what they'd click next. If they can't answer both, the problem isn't traffic.