One of the most important things you need to do when a visitor (or as I like to say, guest) lands on your site is to make an introduction. At a glance, guests need to be assured they are on a site that is going to meet their needs. If it’s not, there’s no sense in them sticking around.
The best place to make this introduction is on your home page. Yeah, visitors will enter your site through all kinds of pages, and that’s great. You always want your guests to enter through the door that has the best ability to give them what they want without having to look around for it. But your home page has a precise purpose, and that’s to be the main port of entry for those who are not yet familiar with your company.
Your home page has a precise purpose: To be the main port of entry for those not yet familiar with your company.That makes your home page your catch-all introduction page. It’s where people go to get their bearings on your site and get the grand overview of who you are and what you do, before moving deeper in any direction.
Use your home page to provide a broad-level glimpse of the products and services you offer and what makes you the right company to buy them from. Your home page content should be broken down in easy-to-scan sections that direct visitors to particular pages or sections of your site, giving them the opportunity to jump off as soon as they see what they want.
Nike uses images and very small amounts of text to highlight key areas of the site that its visitors may want to check out.
Your home page isn’t the place for a lot of long-form content. Provide just enough “introduction” of each area of your site to entice the visitor to take the next step toward getting what they came for.