What to put on your homepage, and what to leave off

A homepage has about five seconds to answer one question: am I in the right place?

Most don’t. They open with a slideshow, a mission statement and a photograph of a handshake, and the visitor leaves none the wiser.

The three questions every visitor asks

Forget clever structure for a moment. People arriving on your site want to know:

• What is this? Say it in plain words, above everything else.

• Is it for me? Show who you work with or what it costs.

• What do I do next? Give them one obvious button.

Answer those in that order and you’re ahead of most of the internet.

What earns a place

Space at the top of a site is like space in a shop window. Whatever you put there says “this matters most”.

Keep

Your one-line description, your best piece of work, a real photograph and a way to get in touch. Opening hours too, if you have a door.

Cut

Anything written to impress the people who already work for you.

The front-door rule

If you wouldn’t tape it to the glass of a real shop, it doesn’t belong above the fold.

What Moonlit put first

Moonlit Swim Club could have led with the restored lido, the lanterns or the DJ. Members only ever wanted one thing from the site, though: a lane, tonight.

So the page opens with the next three swims and a button marked “Book a lane”. The atmosphere lives further down for anybody who wants to linger.

Try the five-second test

Show your homepage to someone who has never seen it, count to five and close the laptop. Then ask what you do.

Whatever they say is what it says. If that isn’t what you meant, book a 30 minute call and we’ll find the sentence together.