How to design a high-converting homepage

A homepage usually loses visitors in the first few seconds, and the headline is the first thing to check. A line like 'Streamline your workflow' could describe a dozen products, so the stranger has no reason to read on. They scroll for a picture of the product. If the first screen shows a stock photo of people smiling at a laptop, the scroll carries past the fold to a logo row, a grid of icons and a footer. By then many have decided the page is written for someone else. The button at the top can be right, but a visitor who cannot name the product will not press it.

• Can a stranger say what the product does after a few seconds on the first screen?
• Does the headline name a job the buyer wants done, or the company's category?
• Is there a real view of the product before the first scroll, not a stock photo?
• Do two buttons with different labels compete for the first click?
• Does the menu hold more links than a new visitor can choose between?

A headline has two jobs in one line. It tells the stranger whether the page is for them, and it says what the product will do for them. Most homepage headlines do neither. 'The all-in-one platform for modern teams' is a category, and a team reading it cannot picture doing anything with it. Compare 'Send client invoices from your phone and see who has paid' with 'Run bookings, payments and reminders in one place'. The first names one job and one moment. The second lists three jobs and leaves the reader to pick one.

Test the line by reading it aloud to someone who has never seen the product, then asking who they think it is for. If they name the wrong buyer, the headline points at the wrong visitor, and no layout change will fix that. Keep the line short enough to fit on two lines on a phone, because anything longer pushes the first button below the fold.

The first screen should answer 'what is this?' before the visitor scrolls. A real view of the product does that: the calendar, the invoice list or the checkout summary, whichever screen the buyer will spend their day in. A photo of a smiling person at a desk does not, because it could sit on any site in the category. A short video helps only if it opens on the product, since a visitor waiting through a logo intro often leaves before anything is explained.

Look at the first screen on a phone, which is where many strangers arrive from an ad or a message. The product view should still show its key labels at that size. If the view needs a zoom to read, the visitor reads the headline again, scrolls, and leaves. Keep the picture and the headline on one screen, so they confirm each other.

A hero with 'Book a demo', 'Start free', 'Watch video' and 'Contact sales' asks the stranger to choose before they know what they are choosing between. The wrong version has four buttons of similar weight in the first screen. The right version has one filled button in the hero, labelled with the step the stranger can take now, such as 'Start free trial', and one text link for the other route, such as 'Talk to sales'. The header and the closing section repeat that same primary label.

The label has to match what happens after the click. If the button says 'Start free trial' and the next page asks for a company size, a phone number and a card, the visitor feels tricked and leaves at the form. Point the homepage button at the shortest step that puts the stranger into the product, which is often an email address and a password, not a call with sales.

Rerun the same visitors after each change to the headline or the first screen. Your read of the new page is biased, because you already know what it is meant to say. The same profiles arriving from the same ad or search show whether the new line holds the visitors who left on the old one. Keep one run per edit, so you know which change moved the visitor.