An ecommerce website is more than a tool for selling products online — it is also a representation of the business behind it. Creating a lasting impression in your customer’s mind is essential to ensure your business stands out in the crowd.
A website that inspires trust and converts web traffic into paying customers requires two things: amazing functionality and an intuitive design that speaks to its audience.
Magento provides its users with a platform that’s highly functional and fully customizable. But, when it comes to Magento UI design, most merchants find themselves swimming in the deep end of the pool, thrashing around aimlessly.
In this article, we’ll cover one of the most crucial aspects of a website — its homepage design. Read on to find out best practices you should follow to create an attractive and intuitive homepage for your Magento website.
Creating a compelling Magento homepage design
A website’s homepage can be broken down into three major components:
- Website header
- Homepage body
- Website footer
We’ll go over each of these in detail, breaking them down into smaller components to understand how to create a homepage that converts.
Website header
A website header extends to nearly every page on the website and is often one of the first things visitors see when they land on any page. Getting this right is crucial, so let’s take it a step further by breaking it down into sub-components.
Logo
Having your logo positioned and sized correctly is critical. It doesn’t matter if you’re going with a center-aligned logo or one that’s right or left-aligned. What matters is that the image file uploaded is the same resolution as what’s displayed on your website. Nothing looks worse than a logo that’s pixelated or has a messed-up aspect ratio.
Using an appropriately sized PNG or JPG, or better yet, an SVG file will help ensure the logo looks clean and crisp across all devices. Even so, testing it on different devices, screens, and resolutions is strongly recommended to ensure it resizes and aligns properly.
To add your logo, head to Content > Design > Configuration from within the Magento admin panel and upload it in the format of your choice. Note, Magento doesn’t allow SVG uploads by default as a security measure. If you aren’t concerned about security, you can enable SVG uploads by using a custom extension.
Primary navigation
When it comes to building primary navigation, less is always more. Having a proper hierarchy across your products and categories will help create a menu that has a logical flow.
Most want it to be easy to navigate and clutter-free while still being legible and stylish. To that end, stay away from bold fonts and opt for cleaner fonts like Oswald or Open Sans.
Search box or search bar
For an ecommerce website, having a search box or search bar in the header is necessary. It makes it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for and creates a stress-free shopping experience.
Magento provides store owners with one of the best search technologies in the market today — Elasticsearch. Leveraging this by providing easy access to your website’s search functionality will help customers find what they’re looking for sooner and give you an edge over your competition.
Additional navigation or content
If you’d like to add supplementary elements like currency and language switchers or quick navigation shortcuts, an additional bar on top of the primary navigation is a great place to do this.
You can also add a bar under the primary navigation highlighting promotions or unique selling points to grab your customer’s attention and bring down your website’s bounce rate.
Homepage body
A well-designed header is vital to creating a lasting impression. Backing it up with great content will keep customers engaged and encourage them to click through to view what you have on offer.
To design the body of your homepage, you need to create a new page in the Magento admin panel by navigating to Content > Elements > Pages > Add New Page.
In the first section, i.e., Page Information, enter the page title, set a URL key, select the store view, and make sure you set the page status to ‘Enabled’.
Next, under the Design tab, select your preferred layout from the layout column before heading over to the ‘Content’ section to create your homepage.
A good homepage design will have the following components:
Hero banner
Every homepage requires well-thought-out hero content. Hero content is usually a large banner in the form of an image or video, which typically occupies most, if not the entire width of the webpage.
The hero section should inform website visitors of your business and its services and inspire them to continue exploring your website. To do this, you should use high-quality images or videos with a concise call to action and a brief description of your offerings.
Promoted products
Next, showcase high-demand and best-selling products or categories under the hero banner. After all, this section is prime real estate, and utilizing it to display what’s in demand will help make the website appear more relevant to most customers.
You can do this by creating a block in Content > Elements > Blocks inside the admin panel and inserting it onto the homepage using Magento’s widget functionality by navigating to Content > Elements > Widgets.
You can also use Blocks to create and display promotions in multiple locations on your website besides the homepage.
Highlight unique selling points
The homepage is the best place to highlight some unique selling points of your business. Showcasing how you’re different and what makes you special helps customers make better buying decisions. Even if you offer the same products as your competitors, addressing your customers’ pain points will make it more likely that they choose you over your competitors.
Focusing on your strengths and answering important questions like what you do, how you do it, and why you do it will help you shape your image in your audience’s minds and showcase your brand’s value proposition.
Additional content
The last quarter of the homepage should be reserved for additional content like social proof using client testimonials and targeted content like blog posts. Utilizing this space efficiently will help you improve your search engine rankings and boost your conversions tremendously.
Social proof comes in handy when a first-time customer discovers your website. It helps build trust in their minds by reading reviews and testimonials written by individuals or businesses like them.
Blog posts are a great way to add content to your page and website to improve its ranking organically. Carefully curating the posts displayed on the homepage will help you rank for keywords in your industry and provide value to your customers.
Website footer
The footer is an often-neglected part of any web page. Although being a global element like the header, it rarely receives the same consideration.
Footers help customers understand that they’ve reached the bottom of a page. More importantly, customers often scroll to the footer to find expected information like FAQs, company information, terms and conditions, and shipping information.
- Website logo, basic information with a link to the About Us page, and social icons linking to relevant social media pages.
- Navigation links to popular category pages or landing pages.
- Quick access links like FAQs, shipping information, and return policy.
- Lead-gen content like newsletter signup, links to blog posts, or freebies.
You should also add a copyright notice to the bottom of your footer to protect your website content. It notifies visitors that your website content cannot be copied without express permission from the site owner.
To add the copyright notice under the footer, navigate to Content > Design > Configuration inside the admin panel. Under the ‘Footer’ section, you can add miscellaneous HTML and copyright information for the store.
Another good-to-have element in the section under the footer is a link to the website sitemap. A link to the HTML version of a sitemap will help search engine bots and human visitors find content and pages more easily.
Bonus tip
You should implement an exit-intent popup on your homepage. They aren’t as intrusive as standard popups and do not hinder the visitor’s browsing experience. This is crucial to creating a stress-free shopping experience without coming across as pushy with your promotions.
Exit-intent popups can be used to offer limited-time offers to create a fear of missing out and motivating the customer to purchase instead of navigating away from your site.
How to make your homepage convert more
Each element on the homepage must be purposeful and curated with careful consideration. Understanding a business’s target audience and tailoring each section to speak to their needs and pain points is key to achieving a homepage that converts visitors to paying customers.
If you feel design and creativity are your weak points, approaching an experienced Magento design company is the best way to achieve a high-quality homepage design.
Author: Jan Guardian
Jan Guardian is the Chief Business Development Officer at Staylime, a Magento development company headquartered in Redwood City, California. He is responsible for developing and leading the sales and digital marketing strategies of the company. Jan is passionate about sales, marketing, and emerging technologies.
Website: https://staylime.com/
Company: Staylime
Gravatar ID: guardian.jan@gmail.com