Shoppers become quickly disenfranchised when they can’t quickly locate the content they seek. When a shopper first lands on your homepage, what you choose to display can make the difference between a purchase and a bounce. (Hint: “bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors who land on a single page of your site and leave without ever clicking a link or venturing further into your website.)
Maintain these five vital elements on your eCommerce website’s homepage and convert more browsers into buyers:
- Intuitive navigation and search
Your hope is that your shoppers will click links from the homepage and continue deeper into your website, eventually making purchases. If what they want is not one of the items you have chosen to feature on your homepage, it must be easy to instantly locate the site’s navigation, and to select the desired topics. Similarly, the search function must be obvious with options for displaying the results, such as choosing the number of results to display and filtering the results by attributes. Easy navigation from the homepage through the website leads to reduced bounce rates and higher conversion.
- Prominent customer service/contact info
It is a little known fact that a large number (sometimes up to 50%) of web orders actually come in over the phone. For a number of reasons, customers may prefer to speak to a human about the products they consider purchasing. If service and contact info is easy to locate, customers are more likely to pick up the phone. With a positive response to inquiries, confidence rises and orders increase. Regardless of how orders are placed, more orders resulting from your website is a positive result.
- Carefully selected features
Strong eCommerce website homepages feature products and departments on the homepage. These might be best-selling items, new products, seasonally appropriate departments, or other products you want to showcase. It is best to show a variety, present them attractively, and remember not to overdo it. Let just a few major calls to action dominate the page and include some more subtle features to round it out.
- Evolving content
Keep the homepage current by replacing the featured items and departments frequently. New promotions, online specials, seasonal products and links to constantly updated content keep the search engines, and your shoppers, coming back for more.
- Just enough copy
New visitors to your website need to understand what you offer. Text on the page is also excellent for search engine optimization and indexing. However, too much copy clutters the page. Know your audience, identify the key search terms they’d use while searching for your products, and optimize the meticulously chosen homepage content to appeal to them without it taking over. The fundamental decision of design vs. content is a major one (and hopefully one that you make early in your eCommerce website development process). With keyword-rich copy that compliments the design and images, your homepage will perform well for you.