It’s very easy, when designing your new site, to get excited and want to put everything on one page. We want our customers/clients to be able to see everything we offer and get to it from the homepage and although we have the best intentions, its probably not a good idea. Putting everything on one page can lead to sensory overload and actually drive away potential leads.
Just like KISS pt. 1, 2, and 3, better have a plan!
Single Purpose
There are really 2 kinds of homepages, Single Purpose and Preview. A single purpose homepage is just what is sounds like, a landing page that introduces your business, service or product, but instead of presenting a blog, and a email sign-up form, and a recent posts module, and a buy our product button, it focuses on only 1 goal, your most important goal.
There are some really great benefits to a Single Purpose homepage. It keeps your site’s visitors’ attention on completing one task and funnels them through that process. It is a proven fact that with fewer or no distraction a site will gain more conversions and leads. Not just any leads more qualifies leads as your visitors are focused on a single product/service.
As you have guessed a single purpose site only shows your site’s visitors one aspect of your business and you may lose leads because your visitors may be looking for a different aspect of your business. (This can be remedied by using landing pages and marketing those, but that’s for another post.)
Preview Homepage
A Preview Homepage on the other hand presents multiple aspects of your business and has multiple goals for your visitor to accomplish. With this style of homepage you can present your products, an email sign up form, a module showing recent blog posts, and more, all at the same time. If you have a business that has many services or products this may help to engage more of your visitors and help them accomplish their goals.
Which one for me?
The best place to start is your goals list you created in KISS pt.1 and your features list in KISS pt.2. Do you have many goals you are trying to accomplish at once or are there only a few? Do some of the goals contradict each other, or keep your site’s visitors from completing other goals?
How can goals contradict? Suppose your main goal is to have visitors fill out a “Free Quote Form” so that you can build a list of qualified leads, but on the same page are link to recent posts on your blog. That visitor may get distracted part way through the form and go read a blog post and never complete your “Free Quote Form”.
Its best that if you have few goals you create a single purpose homepage and landing pages for each of the other goals. This will keep each page simple, easy to complete, and lead to more qualifies leads.
If you have many goals that work in tandem it is best to use a preview page as your visitors are all coming for various reasons and supplying multiple options will allow a majority of your audience to complete their goals and your to gain more leads.
There isn’t a right or a wrong answer, but by working with your web designer/developer you can create a plan and design that will look good and help you reach your goals.
