Provide Better User Experience with Homepage Optimization for Your E-Commerce Website

The homepage is the first page a user will see and is one of the signature pages of an online shop. As a result, the goal is to make it both user-friendly and search engine friendly.

Upon accessing your shop’s homepage, users should easily understand:

• Who you are.
• What you are selling.
• Why they should buy from you.
• How to find the product they are interested in.

On the other hand, when a search engine spider crawls the homepage, it should easily extract information about your business, address (if you have a local presence) and products.

Homepage Optimization

An E-Commerce store’s revenues will stem from the number of users that converted to paying customers after accessing the online shop. That’s why optimizing for user experience is critical for your homepage. As already noted, a user on your homepage has to be provided with information about the company, its products or services.

In order to achieve this goal, it helps to carefully consider the design and structure of the homepage.

Above the Fold Content

First thing to do is optimize the above the fold content. Above the fold content is the content that is immediately visible to the user without having to scroll the page. When the homepage is fully loaded, what does the user see before moving on to a different part of the website?

That’s the above the fold content and it’s the first chance to make a good first impression and convince users to stay on your website. If the above the fold content is not appealing and doesn’t encourage users to navigate further, then customer bounce rate will be relatively high.

What kind of content should be included above the fold? These are the essential elements:

• Logo
• Menu options (The menu options should be based on the results of the keyword research process and the structure of the menu, should match the structure of your shop.)
• Appealing headline
• Offers or promotions
• Contact information
• Search box
• Call to action buttons

Every E-Commerce store will have its own niche and slightly different marketing goals, when it comes to homepage optimization. When in doubt, the best way is to peek at other successful E-Commerce websites in a specific niche and see which one of the elements in the above the fold content takes precedence.

In some cases call to action buttons are predominant, while other times an appealing headline is all it’s necessary to pique the user’s curiosity.