What Belongs on a Front Page, and What Does Not

Take a fur workshop as the example. The front page is where most visitors land — some arrive on a deep page from search, but the front page still carries the first impression for the majority.

The header

Name the business, and say what it does. A name alone tells a visitor nothing:

Stuslov & Partners
Fur workshop

Add the city if the business is local. A visitor five hundred kilometres away should learn that in the first two seconds, not after three pages and a visit to the contact form. If you ship anywhere, say that instead — the point is to answer the question before it is asked.

Put the phone number in the header, on every page. Someone looking at a product should be able to glance up and dial. Hiding it on a contact page means going back and forth, and the visitor who does not navigate confidently simply gives up.

A search box, top right, if the site is big enough to need one. A small catalogue does not.

That is the header. The instinct to ask "what else can we fit in?" is the problem — the useful question is "what can come out?". Clients typically want a slider, a map, current promotions, two landlines, three mobiles, several messaging accounts, eighteen menu items and the company's social feeds. All of it in the header.

Stuslov & Partners          +00 000 000 00    Penza
Fur workshop                Delivery nationwide

The menu

Three to five items. In this case:

Home | Catalogue | Delivery and payment | Contact

Effectively three, since Home is where the visitor already is. Given three options, someone picks the one they need. Given twelve, they read a thousand characters of navigation before reaching any content — and then stop reading.

The content area

This is usually worse than the header. The things that accumulate here, in rough order of uselessness:

• Weather, world clock, currency rates, a calculator
• A tag cloud
• A random photo
• Top 10 products, next to Best sellers, next to Customer favourites, next to New arrivals — four modules over the same catalogue
• A login form, on a site with no accounts
• "Ten reasons to choose us"

None of it helps anyone buy anything. The front page has one job: give the visitor a reason to go one click deeper. What that reason is depends on the business:

Third hat free — this month only
New season collection. Last season 25% off
These pieces are one of a kind

Three reasons, not ten

If you list advantages, list three, and make them real ones. Ask a business what sets it apart and you get: attentive, quality, guarantees, good prices, we answer questions. Every competitor claims the same, which makes all of it worthless.

Real differentiators are usually one operational fact, expressed three ways. One supplier kept export stock on hand, so orders shipped the same day. That single fact became: fastest delivery in the sector; warranty replacements without a wait; lower prices, because shipping costs less. Three claims, one truth behind them, all verifiable.

Worth finding out what customers actually decide on before writing any of it. For that supplier it was lead time — the industry average was a month, theirs was a week. Price came second, because the difference was small and the wait was not.

The text below

Under the hooks, a paragraph about the company. This is partly for search engines, and it is fine to acknowledge that. Write the opening paragraph for a human, keep it short, and do not imagine anyone is reading the rest — visitors move through headings, images and short paragraphs.

What they will not do is read six hundred words about your commitment to excellence.

Scope

All of the above applies to a catalogue or services site for a small business. A portfolio, a community site or a publication answers a different question on its front page, and the balance changes accordingly.