The home page of any e-commerce website plays a critical role in conversions. The home page serves many purposes for potential customers: it is where the visitor gets an overview of the company’s value proposition, learns about the important product and service benefits, reviews special offers, evaluates the company’s expertise, and forms an all-around opinion about whether the company aligns with their business goals.
But because the home page serves so many functions, there are many ways the home page can go wrong. The infographic below, E-commerce Home Page Features to Boost Conversions, shows e-commerce marketing professionals how to make sure every important facet of the home page is executed properly. Tips cover issues relating to content, design, typography, technical web development, navigation, conversion optimization, and user experience. All these areas are important and work together to create a positive experience for the website visitor.
Bookmark this infographic if you have a web redesign project in the works, or if you are a startup eager to open your online store on a rock-solid foundation.
An aspect of this infographic that sets it apart from others devoted to this topic is its emphasis on SEO. Not every e-commerce business, especially newer ones, has an SEO campaign underway. Nevertheless, constructing the home page to be SEO-friendly pays immediate and long-term dividends. Immediately, an SEO-friendly site enables Google crawlers to easily find and index your home page; it may then show up on relevant searches even without a formal SEO campaign in the process. Long-term, an SEO-friendly home page accelerates the ramp-up (and ROI) of an SEO campaign when you decide to start it, and helps avoid the expense, sometimes very large, of rebuilding the home page to accommodate SEO.
In addition to the visual representation of what an ideal e-commerce home page should look like, the infographic includes several important statistics that explain why certain features are so important. For example, you might think return policies are not particularly important to feature on a home page targeted to prospects. However, studies indicate that nearly 70% of shoppers review return policies before buying — making a footer link to your return policy a small but critically important component of the page design. Don’t overlook these statistics!
For more insights on home page design best practices for e-commerce companies of all sizes, please continue reading below.
Provided by Straight North
Brad Shorr is Director of Content Strategy at Straight North, a Chicago-based Internet marketing company that specializes in SEO. With decades of marketing, sales, and management experience, Shorr has written for leading online publications including Forbes and Entrepreneur, and for the American Marketing Association.
