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Build Your Site So Each Page Acts As A Site Entry  By
Eric LeuenbergerIn one of my previous posts titled Most Important Pages on an Ecommerce Site I mentioned the most important pages on an ecommerce site. In a later post titled Most Important Parts of a Product Page I broke down the various sections specific to a product page. In this post I wanted to point out a number of elements that should be present on the home page of any ecommerce site. Although a well optimized — from an seo perspective — ecommerce site will likely receive traffic entering on any number of sub pages (rather than the home page), the home page will see its fair share of traffic. Keep in mind I am not saying the home page will receive less traffic than other pages on the site. I’m saying that any number of pages on a site can be the entry page. This is how each website should be built anyhow — each page being considered a separate landing page which can receive traffic at any given moment from any source.
The home page though does play an important role in the overall picture of a successful ecommerce site. It is the page that many visitors will turn to even if entering first on another page within the site and is the page that no matter what, can set the tone for the rest of the visitor experience. Although not the only elements, I’ll present below 4 important elements a good home page should possess for driving ecommerce sales. 1) Displays a clear offer. It can have multiple offers but works best when the “featured promotion” (that which you are looking to push hardest) is given prominence. If this is a monthly sale you run, give that sale front and center attention then support it with additional creative. The image below shows an offer that could be considered the feature. It clearly attracts your eye even when additional offers are presented and drives home the message that if you buy from Overstock.com you get free shipping on your entire order. The offer, although simple, does even better to win the sale though. It creates urgency through adding just one simple word — today. The use of that one word alone strengthens the offer for building sales on the company side and persuades the visitor to act now or else potentially lose the opportunity to receive free shipping. I talked about creating urgency in my post titled Planning Ecommerce Promotions. 2) Contain a clear call to action. A call to action persuades the visitor to act upon something. This can be clicking a banner to see the monthly sale item(s), signing up for a newsletter mailing, adding an item to their cart, etc… Each of these actions should contain a call to action that supports the end result. Common calls to action on a home page might be in support of sales, new products, daily features, and more. An example call to action would be a banner with details on the sale of the month and the text “click here to shop now!’ The image below is a good representation of the use of calls to action.  Continue reading this article.
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EnterpriseEcommerce
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