What to Put Above & Below the Fold for Maximum Conversions

Did you know that the layout of your homepage can make or break your website's success? 🧐

 If visitors land on your site and don’t instantly find what they’re looking for, they’ll bounce faster than you can say “conversion rate.” Today, we’re diving into the Homepage Formula—what you need to put above and below the fold to maximize your conversions and keep visitors engaged from the get-go. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Homepage Formula Introduction
• 1:57 Why Your Homepage Matters
• 3:34 Above the Fold Essentials
• 7:53 Navigation & Mobile Design
• 9:46 Below the Fold Content
• 14:30 Take the Homepage Test

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:39

Did you know that the layout of your homepage can make or break your website's success? If visitors land on your site and don't instantly find what they're looking for, they'll bounce and leave faster than you can say, conversion rate. Today we're diving into the homepage formula what you need to put above and below the fold to maximize your conversions and keep visitors engaged from the beginning. Let's get started. Welcome to the eCommerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old. My main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place, so sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show. Today, we're talking about one of the more crucial elements of your website the homepage specifically, how to structure it for maximum conversions. We're going to be talking about one of the more crucial elements of your website the homepage specifically how to structure it for maximum conversions. We're going to be talking about how to make a first strong impression and strategically place content that guides visitors towards taking action and not just leaving your site really fast. So, first off, why does your homepage matter? It is often the first impression visitors get, so we want to make sure that it counts. We want to make sure that it's warm welcome, inviting and very clear as to what you do and who you serve. Studies have shown that visitors form an opinion about your website within 50 milliseconds. That's really fast, 50 milliseconds. Think about a time you landed on a web page the first time or the next time you go to a new web page. Consider how long does it take you to form that initial opinion. I bet you're going to find it's really fast like that. And if your homepage is cluttered or unclear, they're likely to leave, and you're likely to leave too when you visit a website that's cluttered or unclear. So our goal is to guide visitors and build trust and drive them to take the next step and take action.

Carrie Saunders: 2:49

So first we need to make sure that we have the above the fold part of our website dialed in and great. So what is above the fold. In case you're not familiar, that is what you see when you land on the web page, without scrolling, whether that's on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a phone. So that's what they see and what your customers see when they open your web page before they do anything else. So at the top of this web, of your web page, what you really need to have is a clear and compelling call to action. It should really immediately communicate your value to the potential prospect, who you serve, what you do, and it should be very clear and not clever.

Carrie Saunders: 3:34

So we want to make sure that we're really speaking to the audience's words and speaking more towards the benefits of your services or your products than to the features, more towards the benefits of your services or your products than to the features. So get in your customer's mind and try to come up with you know. What are they, what's their pain points, what am I solving, what's my end result? So talk about your end result and how you help them. You want to make sure we are avoiding vague language and then also clever language. We want to be very, very clear. You can also if you feel like your headline tends to want to be a little bit too wordy. Consider having a sub headline or brief description underneath it if you need to further explain. So maybe your headline is a more brief summary that captures their attention, but you need to explain a little bit more. Use that with a subheading or a brief description underneath.

Carrie Saunders: 4:23

And then we want to have a very strong call to action and we want to make sure the call to action is very clear. Do you want them to book a call? Do you want them to download a free guide of yours? Do you want them to start shopping on your website? If they're e-commerce, what do you want them to do? And whenever you have that call to action, we want to make sure it's very action oriented, as the word says, and we want to make sure that that is very clear. So, download your free guide. That's not what I would recommend, because that's too vague. What kind of guide are we getting? We don't know what's going to happen. Now, when we say book a call, we know we're going to be booking a call, but maybe we want to maybe say book an. That way they know oh well, if I book a call, I'm getting information about this person. So it's a little bit more specific. So you might want to say you know, download a free SEO checklist. I might want to say that, like on my website, for example. Then you know it's a free SEO checklist. Somebody looking to search engine optimize their website will be like, oh, that's what I need and that's what I want, and they'll go get it, rather than download a free guide Very vague and it's not very.

Carrie Saunders: 5:37

You're not compelled to do it. So we want to make sure we keep it as short as possible but make sure it's action oriented and we want to also make it a bit more visually stand out. So we have our brand colors. Maybe you have two to four brand colors. Typically people have three. Well, you want to reserve one of those brand colors generally for your call to actions and for the places you really want to grab their attention. Amazon does this really well. Their orange checkout button is, you know, right there in your, in your face. Now it is part of their branding. You know that, but yet it stands out from the rest of the page because the rest of the page is like white and gray and things like that. So we want to make sure that our button's standing out. So if they were to put a gray button. Not that most people put a gray button, but if they were to put a gray button, you wouldn't notice the add to cart as much. So we want to make sure that the button stands out visually as well, and then towards the top and above the full content, it's a really good idea to have a visual element.

Carrie Saunders: 6:34

We want to use a high quality image or video. I highly recommend, if it's a video, not to have an autoplay, please. That makes some of us motion sick, but we want to make sure that it supports your message. And if you're a your own brand say you're a coach or a course creator you know a great photo of you may be the best idea here. People like to look at people. It's just our nature. So when we have a picture of a person looking us in the eye on our website, we're more drawn in to look at that person and then look at the items around that person on the website. So having your photo is great if you're comfortable with that and if that makes sense for your brand. If it doesn't make sense for your brand say your traditional e-commerce and you're selling products then it's fine to have some sort of. Maybe it's your main feature of what you sell, or maybe it's a collage of what you sell. Obviously, we don't want to be too busy, but we want to support our headlines and all the other elements that are with it. And, like I said, people connect with faces, so showing and welcoming you can even have a team photo if you're a team too, or a short intro video of your team as well, if that is applicable to you.

Carrie Saunders: 7:47

And then our navigation is also very important. We want to keep it clean and simple. We want to limit that top menu items to about four to six, maybe seven if possible, and so we want to make sure that it's very clean and clear. We want to make sure the words are what people expect. Don't be using really odd clever versions of the words that people expect to see up at the website at the top, because most people scan a website and then they'll decide from that scan whether to actually then read the words. So we want to make sure it's very scannable. We want to have each of the menu items delineated or spaced out enough that we can easily scan each of the words, and we want to make sure that the common terms you're going to find, like about services, blog contact or contact us. Those are the typical words we see. At the top Could be shop. If you have an e-commerce store, or, let's say, if you are a traditional e-commerce store, you may have your top five categories at the top as well as. As well as some other supporting links for an e-commerce store, like checkout and login and things like that.

Carrie Saunders: 8:56

So we want to make sure these are important, more like industry standard use the rest of your website to really stand out, because we want to make sure the navigation is easy and clear. We don't want to be clever in the navigation 99% of the time, so also make sure we want to look at how your homepage looks on desktop, mobile, tablet, if possible. We want to make sure that it looks great on all of those, because some of your above the fold content may not show on mobile. So you might want to adjust some of the elements when it's on mobile so that it's more effective for mobile. So we don't want to be hiding those really important things. You designed for the desktop version, so make sure you're testing it on mobile as well. And then, what do we put below the fold? What do we put next on the website. So once they're intrigued, our customers and visitors will scroll down more, and so this area should build on the value you have presented above the fold.

Carrie Saunders: 9:55

So we can include some elements like social proof, and this is in no particular order. It kind of depends upon your vibe and what you're trying to come across with on your website. So as I list these out, you know that you can rearrange these as it seems fitting for your website, but social proof would be definitely one of them. Testimonials, reviews or client logos could be media mentions, things along those lines that produce a social proof. People want to know that they can trust you. So word from other people is a great way to get social proof. As we talk about on the website a lot, it just is that next step to building that trust factor and feeling confident in this person that's new to you. It's kind of like a friend referring you to this potential person. So it's kind of like a friend referral there. So think of it like that.

Carrie Saunders: 10:47

And then you also want to put the features and benefits. We generally want to talk about benefits first versus features, so we want to go into detail about what makes you unique and what benefits they'll get. What end result are they going to get from your products or your services? You can use bullet points or icons to help make this part scannable. And if you do need to do features, I would you know you maybe put them a little bit farther down the page. We do want to grab them first with benefits before we land them with features, so, but still want to make sure it's clear and it really supports the benefits as well, so they kind of go hand in hand. And then any supporting content that you think is necessary. So maybe a brief section about your services or your products, with links to learn more. We want to keep it very focused and very easy to navigate so you can kind of play with this area here, because it kind of depends upon who you are and who you serve as to what kind of supporting content you might want.

Carrie Saunders: 11:49

And then, as you're going doing this, as you're building this, going down through the page, we don't we want to make sure there are visual breaks Alternating background colors is a great way to do it or images. We want to keep the content visually interesting and if you have a website where it's like you have an image and then you have text beside it and an image and text. What you really want to do to help the reader scan down the page is to image on the left, text on the right and then alternate it, do text on the left, image on the right, and you know as you go down the page, if you do all images on one side and all text on the left, image on the right, and you know as you go down the page, if you do all images on one side and all texts on the other, our eyes aren't drawn naturally to follow the page and keep going down. We get stuck. We get stuck at every single image, that's, let's say they're on the left. We get stuck at every single image and we don't tend to scan to the right to see the words that go with it.

Carrie Saunders: 12:43

So making sure you're alternating images and text if you're having some content that's like that is a really good idea to keep them looking down through your page and then you can add some additional call to actions on a page. This is something I want to make sure that you're doing, especially if your page is long. We want to have several call to actions. You can reiterate your main call to action or you can offer a secondary option. This kind of kind of depends on the case by case basis, but you could start with just the same call to action, see how it goes and then maybe add in another one at a later point and see, you know, see what? Whether you get a lot of clicks on it or not. So you can play with this.

Carrie Saunders: 13:25

I don't feel like you have to get it perfect the first time. We want to make sure that we are testing things and letting things stay up long enough so that we can get a good feel as to whether they worked or not, and we don't want to overload or below the full content too much. So let's prioritize our most important information on the homepage and our most important call to actions. We want to make sure it's not too cluttered. So when you're done listening to this episode, I want to challenge you to take the homepage test.

Carrie Saunders: 13:52

I want you to open up your website on both your laptop or desktop and on your mobile device, and I want you to look at it with a new set of eyes.

Carrie Saunders: 14:02

Is your headline clear?

Carrie Saunders: 14:04

Do you see the main call to action immediately?

Carrie Saunders: 14:07

Is that clear as well?

Carrie Saunders: 14:08

Does it have action words in it?

Carrie Saunders: 14:10

Is your most important content easy to find?

Carrie Saunders: 14:13

Are your navigation menu items? Do they make sense still, or is it outdated ideas that you had, you know, months or years ago that you need to readjust now that your business maybe has changed a little bit? So I want you to take a good look at your homepage after the episode and really let's evaluate it and pick, you know, one to three items that you want to accomplish in the next one or two weeks so that you don't put this too off too much, because a great homepage can really make or break your website and can really increase your conversions. If you have this nailed down properly, your homepage should not only just look good, it should work hard for your business. It should be a supporting salesperson for you. So take a few minutes and look at it after this episode, and we would love it if you would rate or review us on your favorite podcast app, and don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss out on any new episodes that we come up with. And we will see you next week.