For marketers, each point of contact with potential customers is extremely valuable, as it represents an opportunity to drive them further down the sales funnel. Once a visitor arrives on your website, you want to keep them engaged with your content for as long as possible. High bounce rates, which Google defines as the percentage of single-page sessions, are disheartening, because they represent missed opportunities to connect with potential leads and drive sales.
Visitors “bounce” from a homepage for two main reasons: either they didn’t find what they were looking for or the page was too difficult to use. In today’s post, we’ll discuss how focusing on your visitors’ user experience (UX) on your homepage can decrease bounce rates and generate more conversions.
It should be easy for all of your site’s visitors to find what they’re looking for, no matter their purpose for visiting the site. Someone looking for your business history should have an equally easy time navigating the site as someone trying to make a purchase. In order to ensure ease-of-use for every customer, we recommend segmenting your visitors into distinct groups and mapping each group’s expected journey from the homepage to their end goal. Ideally, the journey will be as short and simple as possible for everyone. For example, someone looking to make a purchase should immediately notice the link to your online store, and someone looking to learn more about your business should easily be able to locate the “About” page.
This process probably won’t be new to you, as you likely already map out the various touch-points customers have with your product (such as design, promotion, and packaging). Because your homepage represents an important point of contact with your customers, it’s just as important to drill down into each step of different visitors’ experiences within your site, thus ensuring that you understand the entire process. Understanding and honing this process will help you map the simplest journey within your site for each type of visitor and improve the conversion process.
Navigation menus represent an integral part of a visitor’s journey through your site, as they are often the first place that new visitors look for direction, and they’re also emphasized by search engines. Make sure that your menus are easily navigable and clearly communicate the best route to each page a member of your audience may be looking for.
Select the labels for each portion of your navigation menu based on what your audience is likely seeking. Navigation menus are a place for straightforward, clear language, so save the jargon or organization-specific terms for elsewhere. Similarly, your navigation menu should be consistent and accessible across your site. It should always be easy, for example, for your site visitors to get back to your homepage in one click. The route to your contact page should be similarly simple.
Web design trends have evolved. Gone is the homepage that crams all the information “above the fold”, or above the area that a user would need to scroll down to view. Instead, “long scrolling” homepages, or those that harness the computer or smartphone’s up-and-down scrolling patterns, are becoming increasingly popular. These homepages use the full screen height and width to display individual sections of information, and prompt the user to scroll down to the see the next portion.Given the prevalence of mobile, long scrolling pages’ ability to adapt to mobile devices makes them an attractive alternative to clunky, overcrowded homepages.
Long scrolling design also allows marketers to communicate more fluidly with users, urging them to follow a specific path that leads to a final action. We recommend implementing a long scroll design into your homepage that tells a brief story about your product or service and ends with a specific call-to-action, urging the user to click a button for more content or to sign up for emails, thereby converting them into a lead or prospect.
When users have great experiences on your homepage, they’re more likely to travel deeper — and more likely to convert. For more information on designing for user experience, check out our blog post, “The User Experience: Five Things to Consider When Designing for the Mobile Web.”
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