The home page of your website is THE most important page of your website. For some businesses, the website home page is the most important public facing element in their entire business. Your web design has around ten seconds to capture the imagination and interest of your visitors, so you need to be sure that you are not leaving anything to chance.

As a rule, your home page web design needs to be visually interesting and punchy. Your main message and a call to action should be visible immediately and very easy to read. An effective visual design can help to greatly improve your site’s usability and retain you more customers.

Does YOUR web site home page have the potential to bring you more business, or does it turn potential customers away? Below is a list of ten ways you can improve the web design and presentation of your website’s home page.

1. Remove unnecessary web design elements
Assess your home page web design and remove any elements that don’t have a clear purpose. Be ruthless. If you are not sure, revisit your key business objectives and determine if any specific element helps or hinders in achieving your objectives.

2. Address your key business objectives
Review your business objectives and determine if the web design and information of your home page reflects the purpose of the site. For example, if your key business objective is to generate targeted leads that are followed up by your sales team, ensure that you have a well positioned link on the home page that goes directly to an online form to capture potential clients details.

3. Clearly state who your are and what you offer
The home page message should state clearly and elegantly, yet boldly, who you are and what you do, or what services you have to offer. Try to incorporate your key messages in the headlines of your home page content, rather than in the smaller body text. Use bold and italics to emphasize key words. You can also use colour with your headlines or as a background colour behind elements to help your key messages stand out.

4. What are your points of difference?
What can you tell your visitor about your products and services that make you stand out from your competition? If your differences are compelling enough, your chances of converting a new customer become greater.

5. Invite your visitors to take action
Call to actions instruct the user to do something that will get them one step closer to engaging your services or buying your products, for example “Click here to contact us today”, or “Refer a friend and earn rewards. Click here.”

6. Include a special offer, discount, or other promotion
There’s nothing like a bargain or something free to entice your users to provide you with valuable contact information that can help convert your visitors into customers. Consider offering something free, special offers, or a value added service to encourage more business. Don’t make the mistake of asking for too much information in your form, or you may scare potential clients away.

7. Speak specifically to your target audience
Clearly define your target audience and determine if you are addressing this market sector effectively. For example, if you main audience are older people, don’t use a small font. If you main audience are pregnant women, your content and imagery needs to be sympathetic to this market.

8. Make your navigation usable and consistent
The two main usability rules for navigation are that it needs to be consistent through out a site, and it needs to look like navigation. Most users expect to find the main navigation either horizontally across the top area of the page, or vertically down the far right or left sides of the page, where it needs to remain throughout the site. Label your navigation items so they make sense to the user.

9. Craft the text content to be precise and to the point
As a rule, web text is usually scanned, and is best broken up by bullet points and headings and sub headings. It is also important to have “space” around your content to assist your user to clearly identify and easily read your messages. The content on your website needs to be easy to find, easy to read, and relevant.

10. Use meaningful and professional imagery
Imagery is a very powerful tool that can be used to entice and seduce your potential customers to want more information. The wrong kind of imagery can turn people away, but the right imagery can win you a new client. People will relate to images of people first, and the mood of the image can draw users in. Use images on your site to help tell your story effectively.

WebGenesis, a Sydney web design company, is offering a free usability check list report to download to help you assess the effectiveness of your web design. http://www.webgenesis.com.au