Users visiting your homepage for the first time will most likely land on your homepage first. This is your chance to not only make a good impression, but also guide them into your sales funnel.

Having a rich homepage should never be confused with having a cluttered one that is a pain in the eyes. You shouldn’t take the minimalist route either because communicating everything might be a problem if you arbitrarily limit yourself. Minimalist sites also look ‘empty’ which would be a truly bad rep for an e-commerce site.

The goal is to strike a perfect balance between sleek design and a homepage that effectively communicates the goals of your store, the benefits of buying from you, and the range of products you offer.

Here are some elements you can have on your homepage:

Hero, to introduce your store (see BP #23 and BP #27)
Unique selling points, to differentiate your store (see BP #25)
Featured main categories (see BP #28)
Sub-categories exploration
Other main categories
Featured products (see BP #30)
Personalized recommendations (see BP #169)
Social proof, e.g. UGC feed (see BP #33)

Proper implementation

The most important thing you can do to make your homepage easily scannable is implementing a clear visual hierarchy.

Elements should be arranged from top to bottom and left to right as usual but you should use larger fonts, different colors, and larger images for elements that you want users seeing first like your logo and tagline. Organizing them by size in descending order tells customers what is important and directs them to exactly where they can begin their exploration.

Making everything the same size misleads customers into thinking everything is of equal importance and leaves them confused on where to start. A homepage in which all elements are the same size is also less appealing visually.

Performance Optimization

A visually rich homepage also loads pretty slowly compared to a barebones one. Slow loading speeds drive away customers so you should cut down on the complexity of your homepage to boost loading speeds. You should aim for a load time of under two seconds though the faster the better. Another common trick is to prioritize the loading of important homepage elements like the search bar and logo. These are loaded before other comparatively less important elements like featured products can be loaded.