What Your Homepage Should Be Doing

By Jaci Russo | CEO & Co-Founder, brandRUSSO

Your homepage is probably one of the most visited pages on your website, which means it has a fairly important job to do. Unfortunately, a lot of homepages seem to have been given a different assignment: fit absolutely everything the company has ever wanted to say onto one page.

So we get rotating banners, six service categories, a company history, three awards, a stock photo of people pointing at a laptop, the latest news, a mission statement, four calls to action, and somewhere near the bottom, an explanation of what the company actually does.

Technically, all the information is there. You just need a little patience, some investigative instinct, and perhaps a snack.

A homepage shouldn’t make people work that hard. Its job is to help the right visitor quickly understand who you are, why you matter, and where they should go next.

Start With the Person Who Just Arrived 

Companies tend to approach homepage content from the inside out. We start with everything we want to say about ourselves and then figure out where to put it.

Customers arrive with a very different agenda.

They’re trying to figure out whether they’re in the right place. They want to know if you understand their problem, whether you provide what they’re looking for, and whether your company seems credible enough to deserve another five minutes of their day.

That’s why the top of your homepage shouldn’t require visitors to decode your corporate philosophy before they understand what you do.

A headline like “Building Tomorrow Together” may sound lovely in a conference room, but tomorrow is a fairly large category. Are we building houses? Software? Retirement plans? Emotional resilience?

Clarity has to come before cleverness. If you can manage both, even better.

Tell Me Why I Should Care 

Once visitors understand what you do, the next question is naturally about why it matters to them.

This is where many homepages slide straight into a list of capabilities. We offer this, this, this, this, and fourteen variations of this. There’s nothing inherently wrong with explaining your services, but your customers aren’t visiting because they woke up hoping to admire a comprehensive capabilities list.

They’re trying to solve something.

A manufacturer may need to reduce downtime. A bank may need to build stronger relationships in a new market. A professional services firm may need expertise that helps leadership make a complicated decision with less risk.

Your homepage should connect what you provide to the problem your customer actually cares about. Otherwise, you’re giving them information without giving them much reason to keep reading.

Give People a Reason to Believe You 

Of course, saying you can solve the problem isn’t quite enough. Your competitors have also discovered the internet and are probably making a similar claim.

Your homepage needs to establish credibility.

That might come through client results, recognizable customers, testimonials, industry experience, case studies, certifications, years in business, or a clear demonstration of your expertise. The right proof depends on what your customers need to feel comfortable taking the next step.

The important part is that the proof actually proves something.

“We’ve been committed to excellence since 1987” tells me you’ve been around for a while and remain very committed to the word excellence. A specific example of what you’ve accomplished for a customer gives me something more useful.

Your homepage doesn’t need to tell your entire life story, but it should answer the quiet question every prospect is asking: Why should I believe you?

Stop Making People Choose From Everything

Some homepages seem terrified of leaving anything out, which is how you end up with twelve navigation options and enough buttons to operate a small aircraft.

The instinct is understandable. You serve several industries. You offer multiple services. You have resources, case studies, careers, leadership bios, news, events, locations, and a fascinating story about how the founder started the company in a garage.

All of those things may deserve a place on your website. They do not all deserve equal attention on your homepage.

A good homepage creates a hierarchy. It decides what visitors need to understand first, what they should discover next, and which action makes the most sense from there.

You aren’t hiding information. You’re helping people navigate it.

That’s a much nicer thing to do to your customers than dropping the entire website in their laps and wishing them luck.

Your Call to Action Should Actually Help 

“Learn More” has been carrying an unreasonable amount of responsibility on business websites for years. Learn more about what? Where are we going? What happens when I click this? Am I about to read a case study or accidentally schedule a 90-minute sales demonstration?

Your calls to action should reflect what someone is ready to do.

A visitor early in the buying process may want to explore your services or read a case study. Someone further along may want to talk with your team, request information, or schedule a consultation. Giving people a clear next step makes the website feel easier to use because they don’t have to guess what happens next.

The goal isn’t to cover the homepage in buttons. It’s to create a path.

Your Homepage Isn’t About You Nearly as Much as You Think 

This can be a difficult realization because, technically, it is your website. But the homepage exists for the visitor.

That doesn’t mean stripping away your personality or turning your website into a bland collection of customer-focused phrases. Your brand should absolutely come through in the voice, design, perspective, and experience.

It simply means organizing those things around what your audience needs to know instead of what your internal team wants to say.

This is where Focus, the first pillar of our Razor Branding™ process, matters. When you know exactly who you’re trying to reach, what matters to them, and how you want to be positioned, decisions about the homepage become much easier.

You stop asking, “What else should we put on here?” and start asking, “Does our customer need this to take the next step?”

That question can save you from quite a few unnecessary homepage sections.

Your Website Should Help Sales Before Sales Gets Involved 

For many B2B companies, the website is doing work long before anyone fills out a form or schedules a meeting.

Prospects are researching quietly. They’re comparing you with competitors, forwarding links to colleagues, reading about your services, checking whether you understand their industry, and forming opinions before your sales team knows they exist.

Your homepage is part of that sales process.

If it communicates your position clearly, demonstrates credibility, and directs people toward useful information, sales gets to begin the eventual conversation several steps ahead. If it leaves visitors confused, sales may have to spend the first meeting explaining what the company does and correcting assumptions the website created.

Your website doesn’t have to close the deal. It should make the next conversation easier.

The Takeaway 

A good homepage doesn’t need to explain every service, answer every question, tell your entire history, display every award, and somehow squeeze in the company picnic photos before the footer.

It needs to help the right people understand your company quickly enough to want to know more.

Take a look at your homepage as though you’ve never seen it before. Can you tell what the company does? Can you understand why it matters? Is there proof behind the promises? Do you know where to go next?

If the answers aren’t obvious, adding another section probably isn’t the solution. Your homepage may not need more information at all.

It may just need to do its job better.

Let’s change the conversation. 

Learn more about our Razor Branding™ process
https://brandrusso.com/razor-branding/

Or complete the market perception scorecard to get a clear read on how your market views you
https://brandrusso.com/mp-scorecard/

To learn more about brandRUSSO, subscribe to our blog , or add the He Said, She Said Branding Podcast to your playlist. 

brandRUSSO was established in 2001 by Jaci and Michael Russo, representing a global portfolio of B2B clients in the professional services and manufacturing industries. As a strategic branding agency, we believe in the promise behind the brand, and that by changing the conversation we can inspire and motivate consumer behavior.