Seven Ways To Quickly Strengthen Your Home Page

Your website’s home page is a crucial part of your online presence. It’s usually the first thing people see when they visit your site, and it sets the tone for the rest of their experience. It’s also critical to get things right on your home page because it is the page that gets the most attention. 

But what if you don't know where to start? I've got you covered! Here are seven ways to optimize your artist website home page:

1. Keep things simple!

Unlike most art enthusiasts you may encounter in real life, online users are, by far, much more goal-driven. They seek out, and visit sites because there's something specific they want to accomplish. Maybe they’ve seen your work somewhere, and want to learn more about you; maybe they heard about your latest exhibition, and want to see what your portfolio of work is all about; or maybe they’ve been following you for some time, and now they’re finally ready to make a purchase. Is your site ready to serve up what they’re looking for? Help your audience quickly find what they are looking for by making sure relevant information is readily available, easy to get to, and is presented in a way that will answer any questions or concerns they may have. 

This means making their journey super simple. Avoid the tendency to ‘decorate’ the homepage with extraneous design elements that get in the way of helping your visitors move along toward the desired goal. Also avoid including ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ on that first page of your site. Visual/information overload which can create confusion and make visitors click away. The goal is usually to reduce choice! 

If you have an idea of who your ideal audience is, this will help you figure out what they’ll be looking for once they find your site, and, based on that information, you can decide where you want them to go next, and what action you want them to take before they leave.

2. Reduce the number of navigation links.

Again, your website’s goal is to help your visitors quickly find what they are most interested in. So, even though it might sound counter-intuitive, reducing the number of navigation links on your homepage is one of the best ways to support that effort. Keep them to less than 7, if possible.

To help visitors find their way around your site, do NOT overwhelm them with too many options at once. You can always fold pages of lesser importance under one navigation link. If “home” is showing up as one of your navigation links, you can hide that, because most websites make the website title or logo default to your home page. Then move on to the other links and see if there is a way you can group them into neat categories. Take a hard look at your navigation bar and consider what is absolutely essential. Everything else should become secondary, and some of those less important links can even be relocated to the site footer.

3. Add an opt-in incentive.

Many artists overlook this strategy, and it is among the most important things you can do for your business because it’ll help you grow your email list. “Opt-in” is just a fancy marketing word for a gift that you provide your visitors in exchange for their email. Give away something of value that you think they’d be interested in. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Opt-ins come in a lot of different forms, but the most common version is a newsletter subscription box with an incentive (example: “get 10% off your first purchase”). If you’re looking for opt-in ideas, I published another post about opt-in ideas for artists that you may find helpful. Including an opt-in on your home page is helpful to growing your email list and nurturing that relationship with them, over time. Also, don’t forget to encourage your followers on social media to sign up for your updates or special opt-in offer, and send them to your site from time to time, with this specific goal in mind.

4. Make your contact information easy to find.

The best way to get people interested in what you have to say is by making yourself available for questions or comments from them—so make sure they can find it! Don't hide it at the bottom of a page, or inside your About page, which is something I see from time to time. Make sure it's clearly displayed in your navigation bar, at the top or side of every page, so that people can reach out to you with questions or requests quickly and easily! You can also add that information again in the footer.

5. Include a “hero statement.”

The hero statement briefly explains who you are and what makes you special as an artist. It should be short enough that people won't lose interest before reaching the end (no more than three sentences long), but still provide enough information for newcomers to understand who you are and why they should stick around long enough for more details later on down the line. Place this above the fold if you can, or directly below the fold, so it’s among the first thing your visitors will encounter. Use your site’s “H1” setting (which stands for Headline 1) for this statement on your home page so that search engines understand what your site is all about; this way they’ll know to serve your site up to people who are searching for content like yours.

Write, and rewrite your statement until you’re sure it includes the most relevant keywords used in online searches for artwork similar to yours, and refine the ‘pitch’ until it is clear and concise. If you already have a clear unique value proposition for your business, make reference to that in your hero statement. Once you’ve created your statement, also use it on your blog (since visitors may first reach your blog), and on your social media profiles. This helps people understand why they should give you attention instead of someone else, and keeps your messaging consistent across your online presence. I wrote a blog post about this, with more details, here.

 6. Ensure that your images load quickly.

It can be so tempting to use high-resolution images on your website, because that’s what your visitors are looking for. But unless that becomes absolutely necessary because you’ll lose important details, you’d actually be doing yourself a disservice by including them in that format. High-resolution images will slow down your site, and that means your site won’t rank as highly with search engines, so you’ll get less traffic (especially as compared to other artists with similar offers). That’s the problem, in a nutshell. It won’t matter how beautiful or impactful your work is, if nobody gets to see it!

The best way to help your website load quickly, since your site will likely be image-heavy, is to optimize your images before you upload them! I published a post about this very topic over here, that goes over how to do this, with step-by-step instructions. It’s best to do this before you build your site, of course, but if you already have a site, you may want to go back and switch out your images for the optimized versions. It does involve a bit of work, but this one strategy alone can have a profound impact on your results.

7. Put your footer to work.

Your site’s footer section is visible across every page of your site, so it’s valuable ‘real estate!’ Make sure all essential elements are in place in the footer: social media buttons, email signup form, contact information (email/phone number), links to pages in your navigation bar, as well as other pages not linked in your navigation bar, including your privacy policy and other legal pages, copyright information and more.

Now that you have a better idea of the top ways you can optimize your home page, make note of what you can implement on your own site to make it even better! What other tips have you found helpful to optimizing your home page? Comment below.