The homepage is where half the battle is fought. It’s where a brand literally shows its true colors, where customers are won, trust is gained, and most importantly, where the first impression is made.

Over the years, our design and development teams have delivered dozens of modern, high-performing sites for brands across the globe.

These are plenty of practices and strategies we regularly employ at Simplistic in creating best-in-class homepages. Here are a few of the most effective. Take these, refine them, trust in them, and elevate your homepage to its highest potential.

Aethestic and Design

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash.com

The human brain runs at breakneck speeds. It takes less than half a second for a consumer to form an opinion about your site when they arrive. 

So, before it does anything else, your homepage must form a positive impression with consumers. To do that, you need a presentable, uncluttered layout.

Shopify has amassed a vast selection of themes and layouts that evoke different emotions depending on your industry and brand identity. When used properly, these templates can yield wonderful results.

To construct a truly unique homepage that sharply conveys your brand, reach out to our team about custom theme development. We specialize in designing custom themes that captivate customers and successfully guide them into your online shop.

Example Aesthetic: Pure Culture

Working with skincare brand Pure Culture, our teams at Simplistic created a custom theme that’s elegant, easy to engage with, and chock-full of soft, skin tone colors that reflect both the industry and purpose of the brand’s work.

On this homepage, the colors, imagery, and copy work together to convey a sense of calm and invite the consumer to “get started.”

Pink and cream hues dominate the homepage with the call-to-action contrasted in a slightly bolder green tone that compliments the leaf in the imagery. The leaf itself adds a pop of color to the page while exuding the concept of something that is natural.

This page is uncluttered, offering only one product image and three small chunks of copy over a single, nude background that occupies the rest of the screen. In the next section, we’ll analyze the structure and order of the content on this homepage.

According to Sweor, 38% of people will stop engaging with a site if the content and layout are unattractive. Your first order of operation is to create a clean, engaging aesthetic. As business in all industries continues to migrate online, more and more brands are recognizing the importance of designing an appealing online experience.

Structuring & Ordering Content

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The order of the content on your homepage is as important as the content itself.

Shopify’s templates present a pre-loaded structure you can choose to follow, or change entirely. When ordering content on your homepage, consider the end goal for potential customers landing on your site.

Are you trying to get the potential customer over to a product page to make a purchase? Are you trying to get them to give you their email address? You might just want them to scroll down a little further and learn more about your brand or offering.

Create a goal, then build the structure around that goal.

Example Structure: Pure Culture

In the section above, we analyzed the aesthetic and design of Pure Culture’s homepage. Now, let’s address the structure of the content on this page. 

The main navigation bar at the top consists of a clickable logo that takes you back to the homepage, four page tabs, and a sign in button for returning customers who have an existing account.

Above the navigation bar is a small banner that reads “Try your custom formulas for 30 days.” While the top section presents ample information, it still remains relatively uncluttered.

The bulk of the homepage is dedicated to the header, subhead, call-to-action, and image. 

The large product image gives potential customers a glimpse of what a few of Pure Culture’s products look like. The header, with rotating text at the end of the sentence, conveys what types of skincare problems Pure Culture solves for its customers. The subhead is really a short tagline of sorts that makes Pure Culture’s product feel even more personal by addressing the customer directly, “made just for you.”

Everything on the page leads to the green button prompting the potential customer to “get started”. This button links to a product page for a custom cleanser, serum, and moisturizer kit. 

Pure Culture’s homepage was designed to quickly convey what they do, then transport potential customers over to a specific product page to learn more about their products and make a purchase.

Your homepage doesn’t need to precisely mimic this model, but it should be built with intention and a clear goal for what you want potential customers to do and where you want them end up.  

Headline Keywords & Language

Photo by Andreas Fickl on Unsplash.com

The first thing someone sees on your homepage is usually the headline. 

Instead of using the headline to welcome potential customers to your site, use it to quickly reveal what you do and why it’s beneficial to them.

The headline is also a terrific place to include a few keywords that are relevant to your business and industry, but only if they fit organically. Keywords will help your site rank better on search engines and be more easily identifiable by consumers looking for your product or service.

Write several headlines, compare them, and choose the most compelling one. To get someone to read the rest of your homepage, or to get them to click a button or make a purchase, you must first entice them with the headline.

Go Design It

Those are a few of the best practices and strategies our teams use on a regular basis at Simplistic.

Employ and refine these strategies to elevate your homepage, win more potential customers, and propel your brand forward online.

If you want to hire a dedicated team to build a custom homepage and website, we’re one click away.