12 Examples of Effective Homepages Built Using the HubSpot CMS

Is your homepage lovable?

There are hundreds of things you should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to creating a homepage on HubSpot’s CMS that can greatly enhance the experience of your website visitors. Like with any other design element on your site, the layout and colors are important. Are you showing the personality and identity of your brand?

If you were shown 50 websites, you could instantly determine which ones you love and hate. Before we take a look at 12 companies that have created impressive homepages using the HubSpot CMS, we’ve developed a list of do’s and don’ts to help you redesign or design your website, visitors will certainly love.

Do’s

So you’ve designed this great site but your visitors keep jumping ship seconds after landing on your homepage. No one wants to have a site that isn’t generating traffic or conversions. To ensure that you’re developing a site everyone will love, make sure you’re adding the following elements to your homepage:

Opportunities to convert
Call-to-action in the slider
Blog in Header
Visible value proposition
Usability
Navigation

If your site has all of those elements, you’re on the right track. If you’re missing several of these elements, add them. You want to make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site whether they’re clicking on an offer in your slider or a call-to-action they found somewhere on the homepage you are pushing your visitors to other parts of your site.

One thing many companies forget to add is a great value proposition that’s visible on the homepage. If a visitor has no idea what you do from glancing at your homepage they aren’t going to stay. You want to grab the attention of your visitors, by not including your value proposition, you could potentially be losing perspective customers to a competitor thats providing a better user experience.

All great companies should have a blog that is easily found. If you’re looking for information about building a fence, you want to search a reliable source. So what happens when you cannot find a company’s resources?

Well, according to a recent study by Forrester, approximately 50 percent of potential sales are lost because users cannot find information and 40 percent of visiters do not return to a site when their first visit is a negative experience. Knowing that information, wouldn’t you want to ensure that your content not only is easy to find but also relevant?

Now that you know what elements your homepage should include, there are also several elements you shouldn’t have. Think about giving your homepage a facelift and bringing it out of the 90′s.

Don’ts

What makes a horrible website? Things that don’t represent your company and create a horrible user experience for your visitors. Some great ways to help you identify if your homepage is under performing is a high bounce rate, decrease in search engine traffic and poor conversion rates.

If you are experiencing a high bounce rate or decrease in traffic, you might need to look through your site and identify elements you need to improve or include to create a better user experience. Three of the most important don’ts you shouldn’t have on your site include:

Stock Photos
Broken links
Flash

Hopefully you understand the importance of ensuring all of the links on your site work, especially if it’s on your homepage. A broken link is a sure fire way to have your visitors immediately hitting the back button or going to a competitors site. Who wants to go to a site that doesn’t work and every page or link you click on brings up a 404 error? That can create a frustrating user experience that will keep visitors from returning to your site.

So your site doesn’t have any broken links, but you’re using either stock photography or Flash or even both. One question you might be asking yourself is, what’s wrong with using either of those. One reason why many companies are getting rid of stock photography particularly of people is because they don’t represent your customers or even people who work at your company.

Have you ever looked at any of your competitors and saw them using the same stock photos? Unfortunately, this happens a lot when you’re using stock photos. The photos on your site should create a story telling visitors about your company.

One way visitors can immediately tell if your website is from the 90′s is if you have an animated intro page, flash or a push to enter button. Not only are these annoying hurdles making it more difficult for your visitors to access your content, but Flash makes your website slower to load, poor cross platform support and have issues with ranking on search engines. You want to develop a website that performs and keeps your visitors coming back.

Need some help creating an impressive homepage, take a look at 12 companies that developed with website on the Hubspot CMS.