A storefront is a business owner’s baby. Ensuring the
exterior matches the personality of the business is all part of brand identity.
You want to lure people in, make them feel welcome, and get them to walk around
a bit. Your storefront has to make an impression on someone from the very start
and draw them inside to look around.
Now, picture your website as your storefront. Whether you’re
in e-commerce or B2B or any other industry, your website is often the first
means of contact a potential customer will have with you and your business. Are
you comfortable with the first impression you’re giving?
There are three main ideas we believe should be at the core
of any good homepage design.
Simplicity
There’s no need for design to be complicated. When design
gets complicated, visitors to your site get alienated. Allow your design to be
simple. Think of the way you set up a room in your home. Your home page needs
to be welcoming and clear of clutter. There’s no need to overload on the
visuals. Some think that whitespace is a terrible thing on a website, and that
every inch of that real estate should be plastered with something related to
the business, but that’s just not true. Use whitespace to your advantage, and
don’t be afraid of it.
Clarity
Anything on your homepage needs to be immediately clear.
Specifically, there should be a clear statement of who the company is, and how
your visitors should understand your value propositions. That is, if you’re a restaurant
named “The Garage,” and the only thing you have on yo
ur homepage is a logo and
“Serving Indianapolis,” it might not be immediately clear that you actually
serve food instead of changing oil. Even changing your tagline to “Serving
Indianapolis the Greasiest Food in Town” helps distinguish you from your
competition, and makes it clear what you do.
Logic
Part of design is navigation, and navigating your website
has to make sense. Not only logical, it also has to be succinct. You don’t want
people to have to navigate three different menus in order to find a specific
page. There’s also no need to turn your homepage into a search-and-find game.
Let your visitors find exactly what they’re looking for in an obvious way.
A storefront is a business owner’s baby. Ensuring the
exterior matches the personality of the business is all part of brand identity.
You want to lure people in, make them feel welcome, and get them to walk around
a bit. Your storefront has to make an impression on someone from the very start
and draw them inside to look around.
