Design The Homepage Of The Website

To get straight to the point: Start pages have three functions. You have to present the company in a personable and trustworthy way, generate relevance for the visitor and ultimately lead to the appropriate content.

Showstopper First Impression

Brand management takes place on the Internet! Customers often visit the company website before making contact in the real world. And we know: it’s the first impression that counts! It doesn’t matter whether it’s a person or a website. The decisive factor is how you present yourself in the first few seconds.

Where is the customer now, and how can we give ourselves from our best side? The start page is often the gateway to a website. There are landing pages specially set up for specific online marketing measures such as Google Adwords or search engine optimization in the other cases. You have to be a personable and trustworthy come-over to score points with customers. It is necessary – but not sufficient – to not produce negative emotions in the visitor.

Negative emotions can arise, for example, if your website is not optimized for your visitors’ screens. Avoid this mistake! In your web statistics, you can see which browsers, monitor sizes, and mobile devices you have visited. Adjust these settings on your computer and check how well your website is displayed there. To make a decent impression, especially on smartphones, you usually cannot avoid working with responsive web design. This is a technique your website adapts “responsively” to the visitor display.

Negative emotions also arise when the visitor has to make an effort or concentrate. This happens more often than you think and can happen very quickly. We have already seen a lot of misery in our deliberations: overloaded websites, no clear hierarchies, too little management, or an unclear site order. Avoid all of that!

If we have prevented negative emotions in the first step, in the second step, it is essential to arouse positive emotions, mainly sympathy and trust. Compassion arises through common ground, closeness, and security. If a person wants to generate sympathy in conversation, he adapts to his counterpart.

It synchronizes the speed of speech and language worlds. If he’s well prepared, so is his outfit. A website should capture the mood of the visitors in terms of design, imagery, colors, and shapes and how all these components are caked together. The tonality must also be adapted to the visitor: Duzen or Siezen amounts of text and conceptual worlds.

You can create closeness if you address the visitor directly to make it part of the website. Proximity can also arise when you let people become visible. Without generic image databases, faces almost always create closeness and trust. It makes a clear difference whether the visitor has the feeling that they are talking to an anonymous website or a tangible person.

By the way, we call the former “corporate wall” – also to show that it doesn’t fit into the social media-dominated internet world. People feel secure when you give them security and show understanding. A professional design and an accurate picture of the problem that brought the visitor to the website increase their chances of feeling comfortable.

Are You The Right One?

Benefits communication is essential to knitting relevant websites. To do this, you need to know your target group’s wishes, expectations, worries, and requirements very well. Relevance starts with the definition of the target group. This is not meant to be a tutorial in marketing, but unfortunately, we come across the topic so often in practice that it has to be mentioned.

The better you know your customer, the more relevant you can present your offer. Various techniques can be used to get a precise picture of the target group, for example, focus groups or personas. If the customer is familiar with his characteristics, it is essential to show the real reasons for purchase on the home page.

You need to know that buying decisions are made emotionally to do this. For example, a shoe is rarely bought because of its fit, price, or material. What is believed is more status, security, or adventure. If the shoe is to sell as a status symbol, you should “frame” it accordingly: black background in clear structures with words such as “precision” or “exclusive.” Always put the benefit for the visitor in the foreground.

We don’t work with long texts on the homepage but short messages. Get to the point and, if necessary, have the courage to fill the gap. We can’t just put all the sales arguments on one page and stay clear simultaneously. You also generate relevance for visitors if you give them the feeling that they no longer have to look or click anywhere else. It goes in the direction of Highlanders, “There can only be one!” Highlight your unique selling points and score with your strengths. This will make you distinctive, give you a strong profile and differentiate yourself from the competition in terms of perception.

Guide Visitors Correctly

Let’s assume that the visitor got the right impression and recognized you as a relevant provider. What’s next? At this point, we often come across dead ends in our consulting practice. The visitor is left alone and asks himself: “Where do I have to click next?”. And you know that thinking produces negative emotions. “Don’t make me think” is the better approach.

Take the visitor by the hand and actively offer them at least one option for action. A call to action is perceived well when you click an action button such as the “Add to cart” button from Amazon. Be specific here and use theto reveal what happens when visitors click. “To the novelties” would be better than “more.”

Another entry point into the website’s content is the classic menu. This menu becomes confusing if it contains more than six or a maximum of seven items. Compound terms are fundamentally complex. Generic terms such as “services” or “products” are interchangeable and not very meaningful.

Be specific here, too, and name horses and riders. In this way, you give the visitor click security and pick them up better mentally. By the way, there doesn’t have to be just one menu. You can work with different entry logics in parallel, for example, to map several target groups, product types, or application areas. But then work with other formatting and design elements, such as tiles.

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