User friendliness is the name of the game if you want to build a website that will perform well and help you succeed. That sounds like a harmless term but it can be brutally unforgiving if you’ve got it all wrong. If you do get it wrong you will know it because your bounce rate won’t just be sky high, the traffic you do get won’t stick around that long. Put some analytics in place so that you can start sussing out your trouble spots and how to fix them. You might even hire a person to do a user friendly criteria site audit. Whatever may be going on, if you’d like to have a good business, you are going to take this seriously.
The one and only thing traffic wants to know after arriving on your home page is what’s in it for them. You won’t capture every visitor’s heart, but a well crafted home page will get a percentage of them. Chances are you’ll be building a content site, and that means you’ll need to have quality information. Never make visitors have to click through more than two or three times to find what they want. If you violate this, then you know very well what the consequences will be.
It is important to prove that you are better than the competition but you already know that.
Tons of ways to do this but be careful that you do this in the best way. This is a strategy that involves your making sure your visitors are immediately aware of what your business has to offer. Whenever a new visitor finds his way to your page that is what they want to know. They need to know what it is you offer what how it will be of benefit to them. Make your logo have a short tag line on the upper left–either within the header or just below it. That is one informational device down and your site’s title and introductory paragraph can take care of the rest.
People on your home page want to know what you have for them, so put something in the way of an offer. You can also make use of your side bars for this as well such as a nice banner or a link. So think about what your market wants, and be willing to test out different offers and even ad formats. You can offer something like a special one-time promo or an incentive to join your mailing list. The timeless wisdom is that words sell, and that will always be true – so use good copy to sell what you have.
It is important to avoid things like optimizing for user friendliness or thinking that user friendliness is a universal idea even though the concepts are often that way. Changes are often made depending on the audiences that visit your website. There are always exceptions to the rules and you might be able to get away with a few things that other people can’t.