9 Examples of Effective Homepage Design

Getting Started with Homepage Design

Ever heard of KISS? “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Alright, the "stupid" may not be totally necessary, but it helps drive home the point. Though creating a simple homepage design may sound like an easy task, many companies struggle to follow this advice. With the excitement of building a brand new website or revamping your existing one, it’s easy to want to share all the amazing things you have to offer right there on the front page.

First, start by outlining the most important bits of information and determine how to best structure them to get your message across. This will help keep your homepage design simple, yet effective.

Let’s get into why a smartly designed homepage can positively affect your bottom line. (Hint: whether you're an eCommerce site or not, this page holds the most weight!)

What Makes a Great Homepage Design Impactful to Your Business

Helps inform your target audience about what your business does

First impressions are everything: your homepage should clearly communicate:

1. Who you are
2. What you’re about
3. How your audience can benefit

Your homepage is likely the first page website visitors will land on, so it’s important that you nail this down from the start.

Improves brand awareness

As a part of communicating who you are, you need to establish your brand image. This can be anything from emphasizing your logo and your brand colors, to crafting that memorable one-liner explaining why you’re here (also known as your tagline). Let the world know what you’re all about through compelling (and on brand) content!

It’s a no-brainer that when visitors come across your website they’re thinking, “What’s in it for me?”. Be sure to communicate what problems you solve, how you solve them, and what makes you stand out from your competitors.

Leads to a boost in website conversions

To best put your conversion optimization skills to work, you’ll need to strategically give visitors the opportunity to convert. Think:

• Lead capture forms to build your email list
• Free trials to give users a chance to explore
• Video demos to help explain and educate.

TIP: When you build a website, put your Call-To-Action (CTA) above the fold on your homepage to help increase the Click-Through-Rate (CTR).

9 Homepage Designs to Get Inspired

Here are nine effective homepage design examples with an explanation of why they work, so you can take these ideas and apply them to your own website.

1. Foursixty

Why it works:

• H1 Copy: Three statements: “Your UGC.” “Your Instagram.” “Made shoppable.” Right off the bat, their target audience of eCommerce site stakeholders understands that Foursixty is a platform that deals with shoppable Instagram user-generated content. So simple, yet so effective.
• CTA: The CTA copy is clear and informative, telling visitors they can start a free trial that will last for a period of 21 days.
• Social Proof: A sense of trust and authority is established by listing a few reputable companies (of a vast amount) that use Foursixty with “Trusted by over 3000 brands”.

2. Okendo

Why it works:

• H1 Copy: The bold heading with “Customer Reviews” quickly informs their target audience what the platform is about.
• Header Visual: Okendo takes it a step further in the heading by indicating that they’re the new standard in the customer review space, encouraging people to keep them top of mind. Name-dropping the highly successful eCommerce company Shopify is also a nice touch for credibility.
• Body Copy: Okendo’s use of copy highlights feelings of trust and excitement to resonate with site visitors.
• CTA: The “Book a Demo” CTA paired with the email form field is a well-executed tactic to capture leads.

3. Grammarly

Why it works:

• H1 Copy: The powerful heading immediately draws the viewer in, and the proceeding copy touches on common pain-points and how Grammarly can solve them.
• Social Proof: High customer ratings and an even higher number of people who use the service are prominently displayed.
• Animations: Grammarly does a great job of showing the app in action with animations of different uses cases such as email, word docs, and more. Including website animations in your homepage design is an effective (and fun!) way to further illustrate points and grab attention. Check out these 10 great examples of website animations for more inspiration.

4. 500px

Why it works:

• Branding: The bright yellow shape captures the brand’s visual identity while using strong language such as “best” and “incredible”.
• Visuals: A smart move for a photography-based platform to include a photo in the header, especially one where the subject is pointing to the most important bit of information on the homepage.
• Benefits List: Convincing user benefits are listed below, touching on what makes 500px different.

5. Mint

Why it works:

• Compelling Copy: Mint uses emotionally-charged copy to appeal to visitors. They project an encouraging and reassuring vibe which is important for touchy, high-stakes topics like finance.
• Header Visual: A snapshot of the app’s interface gives visitors an idea of what the app looks like — its friendly UI helps ease the anxiety that comes with money management.
• Prominent CTA: The “Sign up Free” CTA pops in orange, inviting users to get started right away with using the service.

6. Mailchimp

Why it works:

• Keeps it Fresh: Mixing it up is a part of the quirky Mailchimp brand, as they often update their website’s homepage design. You almost want to keep revisiting it to see what’s new.
• Originality: Mailchimp’s custom typography makes the already captivating heading even more so with its friendly yet attention-grabbing serif font.
• Use of Color: the bold statement yellow demands attention and works well with the subdued green CTAs that also draw you in.
• Benefits List: Mailchimp does a solid job of answering the “what’s in it for me” question by listing three key benefits for their customers.

7. Asana

Why it works:

• Value Emphasis: Time is valuable and Asana made sure to emphasize this in the very first sentence on their homepage.
• Header Copy: A clear definition of Asana and its purpose are well-summarized in the main header copy, showcasing their value propositions.
• Animations: As you watch the website animation of the app in action, you feel more and more compelled to hit the “Try for free” CTA to get started on managing your own team’s projects.

8. Spotify

Why it works:

• Trial Offer: The trial offer couldn’t be more clearly communicated with the header copy, “Try Premium free for 3 months”.
• Undeniably Great Branding: Spotify is known to use vivid colors throughout their visual assets, and their website is no exception.
• Header Visual: An image of headphones on a contrasting background catches the eye, illustrating that this is a music streaming service. Simplicity wins again!

TIP: We recommend using a brand style guide to help to keep all of your visuals and designs cohesive.

9. Slack

Why it works:

• H1 Copy: Slack takes a confident approach with a captivating headline. They don’t talk about the features of Slack, but rather how Slack can improve and empower your team.
• Compelling Copy: The ease of use and convenience factor is communicated with “put collaboration at your fingertips.”
• Visual Benefits List: As you click through the list of key user benefits on the right-hand side, relevant snapshots of the platform’s user interface appear, showing you exactly what you can expect to see when using the platform.
• CTA: The “try for free” CTA and email capture form field are hard to resist with the gently floating logos of Slack compatible apps, adding a subtle touch of animation to the homepage.

Website Homepage Tips and Tricks

There’s no magic formula for designing a winning homepage that converts. But, the best website homepage designs do have some common characteristics that we’ve broken down out for you to take note of and carry into your own homepage design.

Minimize excess information, maximize what’s important

Introduce your brand in a sentence or two, and have a clear unique selling proposition (USP), ideally in your H1 copy.

On top of that, your key benefits for your target audience should have a prominent place on your homepage, and that’s it. Anything else on top of that is likely to be fluff.

Use powerful language that resonates

Play up your copywriting skills by incorporating compelling power words to evoke emotions from your desired audience. Tell them how you can save them time with words like “instantly” and “in seconds”. Emphasize the ease of using your services with words like “effortless” and “no nonsense.”

The more you tap into your audience’s minds with power words, the more likely it is they will convert.

Include high quality visuals to accompany your words

With all the time and energy that goes into writing effective website copy, it’d be a shame for that hard work to go to waste with lacklustre images. Ensure that you include high quality photos, illustrations, or videos that are:

1. Relevant to your website design
2. Can further drive your concepts home
3. Stay true to your brand.

Make use of contrasting colors for impact

Contrasting colors is a form of visual salience, which is defined as “the distinct subjective perceptual quality which makes some items in the world stand out from their neighbors and immediately grab our attention”.

In other words, if you’re faced with a series of purple dots with one yellow dot among them, your gaze will naturally go to the lone yellow dot. Apply this knowledge to your website design when creating CTAs for higher conversions.

Showcase brand authority

There's no argument that human beings are creatures easily influenced by others, especially those they consider an authority. With well-known and established brands in your arsenal, it becomes easier to sway visitors to take the desired action on your website.

If you don’t have any high authority brands using your product or service, don’t fret. customer testimonials and “star reviews” can help to build that trust.

Optimize for mobile

With roughly 51% of website traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s a smart idea to practice mobile-first design. A mobile-optimized website design not only enhances the user experience, but greatly impacts your online conversions as well. This is something that can even affect your SEO and traffic, so it’s pretty darn important.

The power of testing

You never really know what will work until you try it. When doing any type of website optimization — whether ony our homepage, product page or alike — it’s important to test. Try different color CTAs, banner images, layouts, and more. Find what works for you and what best resonates with your customers.

Having a stellar website that not only looks great but also converts, should be a top priority for any business. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to start seeing results.

Need a Custom Web Design? We’ve Got You Covered

Working with a design team can help elevate websites even further. Strong design teams like Superside incorporate all the necessary elements of websites built to  convert. See how we’ve transformed desktop and mobile web designs for other brands, and how you can get your own custom web design for your business.