Why is the home page so important? Learn how to do it pixel perfect!

The homepage of your homepage is your figurehead and therefore responsible for the first impression your website leaves on your visitors. Therefore, you should think about how you want to position yourself and your company on your website.

However, your homepage does not only consist of a home page. We have created a separate guide for the successful design of your entire website.

As a rule, the attention span of Internet users is very short. An Internet search engine delivers a large number of results, they click quickly through various homepages and often decide in a few seconds whether they like a website or not. Therefore, your goal should be to arouse their interest with the help of a meaningful home page and thus give them a reason to stay on your homepage as long as possible.

Think of your home page as the front door. If it looks inviting to your visitors, they will pass through it, get to other pages of your homepage, possibly find exciting content there and even buy something in your webshop. If, on the other hand, the entrance door already scares him off, he will decide to turn around after a few seconds and look for alternatives.

The success of your homepage stands and falls with the homepage!

It doesn't matter how much added value your content has to offer: Your homepage visitor will not even get to see it if he leaves your page after five seconds.

So the design of your homepage brings a lot of responsibility with it. But don't worry, you're not on your own in this endeavor. To make it easier for you, we have put together some tips below that will definitely help you.

Before you start creating your homepage, you should set a clear goal. What do you want to achieve with your website? Do you want to sell products, offer a service or just share your thoughts and ideas? Once you have determined the goal of your homepage, you can begin the actual creation.

One of the most important decisions you need to make when creating your homepage is choosing the right platform. There are many different platforms like WordPress, or Webme that make it easy for you to create a professional website without the need for programming skills. Once you have chosen a platform, you can start designing your homepage.

Another important aspect of creating your homepage is the design. An appealing and clear design is essential to keep visitors on your site and make them come back. Make sure that the design fits your goal and target audience. For example, if you are creating a homepage for a business, the design should look professional and serious.

But not only the design is important, but also the content of your homepage. The content should be informative and useful to convince visitors to explore your website further. Also take the opportunity to optimize your homepage for search engines by including relevant keywords like "create homepage". But don't overdo it - too high a density of keywords can cause your page to be considered spam.

As you may have noticed by now, your home page has several different functions to fulfill. To give you a quick overview, we have listed them here:

Functions your home page should fulfill:

• Topic or purpose of your page

• Overview of your homepage

• Provision of important information

• Access to further subpages

• Arouse interest

Let's remember here the short attention span of the average Internet user. As soon as he arrives at a website, he wants to know what it's all about and whether he's in the right place. If the answer to this question requires strenuous scrolling and clicking around, the probability is high that your homepage visitor will either leave the website immediately in frustration or at least remember it negatively. So make sure that the purpose of your website is clear from the home page.

Since the home page unfortunately offers only limited space for your content, it is important to prioritize. You should avoid useless information such as welcome texts or similar in order to preserve valuable space for relevant content.

For example, if it is your real estate agent homepage, this should be recognizable for your potential customers at first glance. You can already achieve this with the design of your homepage, which you complement with a suitable image of an impressive building. In addition still another catching lettering, like "I show you your dream house!", and already it is obvious that it concerns a real estate agent homepage. Furthermore, in most cases it is worthwhile to additionally place a call to action on your home page. This can be done, for example, in the form of a clickable button that is linked to your offer or your contact options.

Of course, your name or that of your brokerage office should not be missing here. These should be positioned in a prominent place so that no website visitor overlooks them.

Overview of your homepage

Your homepage should allow the visitor to get a quick overview of your homepage. To achieve this, it should not look cluttered and untidy. Rather, it should have a well thought-out structure, within which your visitor can move intuitively, even though he does not know your site yet.

For example, if you run a website for your club, you should make sure that your visitor can find all relevant information quickly and easily. Training times, contact information, news and upcoming events should be placed on your homepage or be easily accessible from there.

The advantage of using a homepage construction kit is that the individual elements are put together in a modular way, i.e. a certain structure is already present from the beginning. This prevents text elements, images, etc. from becoming a confusing pile and distracting from the relevant information. However, this doesn't mean that you can't customize your website. Of course, there are many other ways to personalize your homepage according to your wishes.

When providing information, you should always pay attention to the right balance: Everything important must be found on the home page, without harming the clarity. Therefore, be sure to ask yourself which information offers enough added value to deserve a place on your home page and which is better off in a different place. Although this decision is very individual, there are a few things that normally belong on every meaningful home page:

This belongs on a meaningful home page:

• Topic of the homepage

• important notes/news

• navigation

• contact possibilities

• links to imprint and privacy policy

As mentioned before, you only have a limited amount of space available on the home page. If you still want to put as much information as possible in the spotlight, it may be worthwhile for you to use a design with changing content. This gives you the opportunity to present several interchangeable topics briefly and concisely on your home page. In addition, interested parties can click on the linked subpage for more information.

Also, remember that your home page should encourage people to take a closer look at your homepage. Sharing a small selection of essential information can help maintain your visitor's curiosity and direct them to other pages on your site.

After all, the home page of your homepage should pique the visitor's interest and make him curious about the other sections of your online presence. Therefore, think carefully about the content you integrate into your home page and how it will bring you closer to your goal.

Let's imagine, for example, that you are an author and want to use your website to market your books. In this case it is advantageous for you if you do not reveal too much about it on your homepage, but save it for further subpages. This way you invite the visitor to search for further information on your homepage.

This approach can also be applied to other areas, e.g. an online store. Here you can arouse interest by highlighting only your highlights on the home page. In this example, this includes products that stand out due to their quality or price and special services. Also generally known certificates that underline the trustworthiness of your store can be positioned on the start page. To stand out from the crowd, certain unique selling propositions are also suitable, if available.

Basically, you have to decide individually what makes the most sense for you. For example, for some stores it can be advantageous to put selected customer testimonials on the home page. For others, however, this can be detrimental to clarity, which is why it is sufficient to link reviews as part of the navigation.

Does your store waive shipping fees once a certain order value is reached, or does it offer a liberal return policy and numerous payment options? Then you have found the perfect highlights for your homepage!

But again, don't overwhelm your visitor with information.

As so often, less is more.

In the following you can see an example of how a clear start page in the gastronomy area can look like. It is recognizable at first glance that this is a pizzeria. In addition, all information of interest to the visitor (restaurant, menu, events) is easy to find and accessible with one click.

Now that the content and structural details have been clarified, it is time to deal with the legal regulations. A complete imprint and a valid privacy policy are two fundamental elements here.

In Germany, the imprint obligation applies, i.e. you are obliged to include an imprint on your website as soon as it is no longer used exclusively for private purposes. A violation can lead to high fines, which is why it is recommended to integrate one into the website in any case. Depending on what kind of homepage you are dealing with, different mandatory information is required according to § 5 TMG. To be on the safe side, you should therefore inform yourself in detail about this topic.

In addition, your homepage must contain a privacy policy due to the obligation to inform resulting from the DSGVO. So that you are also legally protected here, you can easily generate this in our homepage construction kit under Extras.

In addition to the imprint and privacy policy, copyright is a possible legal challenge. Therefore, make sure that you have the necessary rights for used images and video material as well as text passages. Here, too, you may be threatened with warnings and high monetary claims.

Finally, we would like to point out that this article is only a guide for you. To be on the safe side, you should only rely on information from official sources!