Create Every Page as a
Homepage In a Website Redesign
When you create a marketing-focused, lead generating website you need to understand that any page may act as a home page. Visitors will find you through searches that might bring them to a blog post, a landing page, a services page or sometimes even your actual home page. Is your site fully optimized?
More times than not, they’ll arrive at a page that is secondary to your homepage because the pages and blog posts of your new website will be optimized for keywords that prospective customers are searching for, and those searches won’t always bring them in through the front door. What does this mean?
It means that every page needs to meet the visitor’s expectation of simplicity and ease of use. Every page must include clear navigation so they can quickly understand the structure of your site, how to move through it and how to connect with you at that moment or in the future.
Page Design Tips:
1. Create a clear navigation hierarchy with the layout of the page.
- Primary navigation near the top and/or left.
- Secondary navigation lower and/or to the right
2. Breakdown site navigation into Tier 1 (main) pages, Tier 2 pages and Tier 3 Supporting pages.
- Tier 1: top service/product categories, portfolio, blog, about us
- Tier 2: client list, staff list, contact us, customer support
- Tier 3: social media links, map/directions, affiliates, site search
3. If you offer 25 services, put those 25 under 4 overarching categories so visitors will not be overwhelmed with choices.
4. Add a site map, with all Tier 1, 2 and 3 page links in a page footer.
5. Include contact information on every page, at least an email address.
6. Links to your social media networks should be included on every page.
7. Match the visual structure of the page to the importance of SEO elements.
- Have one headline (h1 tag) per page, followed by body copy (p tag) broken down into sections with subheads (h2 and h3 tags).
- Include images on every page, which are specific to the page’s content.
Of course, your website still has an actual home page and for some visitors, that will be the first page that they see. Here, too, keep the navigation and communication hierarchy clear. Avoid the temptation to dress up the page with animations or complex visuals and interactivity. More than any other page, the homepage is the face of your services or products. You only get one chance to impress that visitor, so make sure you carefully place the essentials you want them to know, as well as the navigation links to the rest of the site, on your homepage.
Apply that advice to all other site pages, too, and your website will be ready to convert visitors into leads no matter what door they open to get to your site. Is your site set up with links and contact information, but nobody is contacting you? Give us a call and we can have a discussion about your analytics to figure out where your visitors are going. We’re here to help.
