Website Homepage Design Tips & Examples

Your homepage is often your audience’s first introduction to your brand, which is why a good homepage design is a crucial part of every website. The challenge is that you only have a few seconds to make a great first impression, guide users to where they need to go, and communicate your value proposition. On top of this limited window of opportunity, as time goes on, homepages can become cluttered, overloaded with information, appear outdated, or worse, create a perception that no one is home.

The good news? Cleaning up your homepage doesn’t require a complete overhaul or redesign. In this article, we’ll explore practical ways to declutter and improve your homepage design, ensuring it serves both you and your users better, no matter your website platform.

What Should Be on a Website Homepage?

You might be asking, well, what should I include on my homepage in the first place? With homepage design, a good rule of thumb is to have a distinct section to represent and direct users to each main navigation item. If your navigation includes “Services”, “About”, “Visit Us”, and “Resources” and your primary call to action is to “Schedule a Consultation”, then you start with your hero section (top of the page) which would direct users to Schedule a Consultation. Then each section that follows would represent your navigation, providing just enough information to help a user understand what they will find when landing on that page and a clear call to action directing users to that page.

Homepage Design Best Practices

A well-designed homepage serves as the cornerstone of your website, shaping first impressions and guiding visitors toward key actions. By striking a balance between visual appeal and functionality, you create an experience that draws users in and keeps them engaged. To help accomplish this, we’ve put together a list of homepage design best practices that can be applied to any website.

Optimize the Homepage Hero Section

When users land on your homepage, they should instantly know what your site is about and what they should do next. That’s why it’s so important to make your primary message and call to action clear and easy to spot. Start with optimizing the hero section of your homepage (typically the first part of your homepage below the main navigation).

• Determine what your primary message is and what the calls to action are that a user needs to take on your site. Ask yourself, what is the main takeaway I want my audience to understand about my brand? Why should a user care about my brand?
• Identify what a user should be doing on your site. Is the goal to register for an event, subscribe to a mailing list, or request a quote for a service? What does the user need to do before they can be ready to take action? Knowing what that user journey looks like for your target audience can help you best guide them to the end goal.
• Highlight your main message or offering and ensure it is visible above the fold on all devices. “Above the fold” is a newspaper term that refers to making sure the most important news article—the one that will make people pick up the paper and purchase it—shows on the front page above the folded part. The headline should be large enough to pick out, concise yet compelling, and actionable.
• Use a strong call-to-action (CTA) that is specific to the end goal. Avoid generic calls to action like “Learn More” or “Read More” or calls to action that aren’t an action at all like “About Us” or “Our Services” in the hero. A few examples of strong calls to action are “Explore Our Services”, “Work With Us”, “Get Started”, and “Shop Our Fall Collection”.

Example of an Optimized Homepage Hero

The homepage for Slack focuses on a single and simple message using color to draw the eye and emphasize who their product benefits. This message is further enhanced by their name-dropping of top, recognizable brands that use Slack.

The call to action “Get Started” is inviting and clear. They also provide a moving visual of their platform so a user can quickly get acquainted with their product and see it in action.

Simplify Your Homepage Layout

A busy-looking homepage overwhelms users and makes it hard for them to navigate to the interior pages of your site, not to mention, muddies your brand’s messaging. Instead, embrace simplicity with your homepage layout. Your design doesn’t need to be packed with every piece of information about your business—just enough to guide users to where they want to go.

• Limit text to short, engaging copy. Large blocks of text (both running vertically and horizontally across the page) can turn visitors away. Aim for concise paragraphs or bullet points that give just enough information to entice users to click through to learn more. Use headings to introduce distinct sections and to break up the page.
• Leverage whitespace (the empty areas around text, images, and buttons) to help make content easier to digest and visually appealing. It prevents the page from feeling cluttered and allows key elements to stand out.
• Use high-quality images or graphics that support your message, not distract from it. If your visuals are too busy or irrelevant, they can detract from the user’s experience. Make sure you don’t have text saved as part of your image, either. Text is unreadable by a screen reader making it an accessibility issue and it doesn’t responsively scale well when part of an image and can get too small or cut off on mobile devices.
• Include fresh content in the form of a news or events feed but ONLY if you are contributing regularly to your blog or have enough events to regularly fill the space. Fresh content helps a user get the impression someone is at home and can keep the user engaged by exploring timely, relevant information. However, this can backfire if your content is extremely dated and/or your events feed shows a blank space or a message that there are “no upcoming events”.

Example of a Simplified Homepage Layout

Warby Parker’s site is a great example of a clean and simplified layout. They use high-quality product images paired with minimal text, making it easy for visitors to understand what the site offers. Their use of whitespace ensures the page doesn’t feel crowded, and key call-to-action buttons (like “Shop Glasses”) are clear and inviting. Everything on their homepage is strategically placed to guide users toward browsing products without overwhelming them with too much information at once.

Focus on Homepage Speed & Performance

A slow-loading homepage can frustrate users before they even see your content. Site speed plays a huge role in both user experience and SEO. Cleaning up your homepage often includes optimizing it for faster load times.

• Be sure to compress images. Large image files are often the biggest culprit for slow pages. Tools like TinyPNG can help you reduce image size without losing quality.
• Avoid excessive plugins or third-party scripts, as these can slow down your homepage. Only keep what’s necessary to deliver a great user experience. You may need the help of a developer or IT department to reduce scripts and/or remove plugins, but this is worth the time to do. Old/outdated plugins can also open up your site to security vulnerabilities.
• Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to measure how fast your page loads and receive recommendations for improvement.
• Embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo rather than uploading them directly to your site. These third-party services manage the scaling of videos and you are able to offload resource management to these services (which are fully capable of doing this) rather than placing this pressure on your website.

Use Purposeful Redundancy

Sometimes users scroll to the bottom of your homepage without clicking on anything. This is where adding a “Where to Next” section or a quick links bar can be incredibly useful. By strategically repeating important calls to action or popular page links just above the footer, you provide users with a gentle nudge to keep exploring your site rather than leaving.

• Add a CTA just before the footer, something clear like “Get a Free Quote,” “Shop Our Bestsellers,” or “Contact Us.” This provides a next step for visitors who might otherwise leave your site.
• Add a quick links bar featuring popular pages if your homepage covers multiple services or sections. Items like “Our Services,” “FAQs,” or “Customer Reviews” can guide users to relevant content and remind them why they are on your site in the first place.
• Purposeful redundancy doesn’t mean duplicating the exact same CTA in multiple places. Instead, present options that are different from the ones in your header or hero section but still lead users toward conversion goals.

Example of Purposeful Redundancy on a Homepage

Etsy uses purposeful redundancy to provide users with multiple ways to shop their site. This is immensely helpful for a user who isn’t quite sure what they are looking for right away and needs some guidance. They let a user shop by a category like occasion (Halloween) and also feature a dedicated section to let a user shop by an entire category (also Halloween).

At the bottom of the homepage, they include a section about What Etsy is and then a call to action to invite users to explore the Help Center. They are assuming that if a person has gotten this far, maybe they need some additional help, so why not provide the user with an option to keep exploring?

Want to Improve Your Website’s Homepage Design?

Cleaning up your homepage design is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to improve user experience and drive more conversions. Whether you’re reducing clutter, speeding up load times, or hitting users over the head (gently) with where to go next, these changes can be applied to any website platform to create a smoother, more enjoyable journey for your users.

Not sure where to start? Reach out to our team of website design experts for a free consultation today.