Your homepage gets a few seconds to answer three questions. What is this? Is it for me? What do I do now? If a visitor can’t answer them almost immediately, they hit the back button and try the next result. They don’t write in to tell you why.
The good news is that the reasons people leave are usually the same handful of things, and most of them can be fixed without a full redesign.
Key points
- People leave when they can’t work out what you do, who it’s for or what to do next.
- Your headline should say what you do in plain words. Clever slogans can come second.
- Give one obvious next step, and repeat it further down the page.
- Slow loading, walls of text and missing proof all push people away.
The five most common reasons people leave
1. The headline doesn’t say what you do
“Elevating excellence through innovation” could be a bank, a gym or a plumbing company. Visitors shouldn’t have to scroll to find out which. Say it plainly: what you do, who it’s for, and ideally where.
Compare these:
- “Building tomorrow’s spaces today.”
- “Kitchen and bathroom renovations in Leeds, done on time and on budget.”
The second one is less poetic, and far more likely to keep the right person reading.
2. There’s no obvious next step
If a visitor decides they’re interested, what should they do? Call? Book? Get a quote? Too many homepages offer six options at once, or none at all. Choose one main action and make it the most visible button on the page. A secondary option, like “See our work”, is fine. A menu of ten is not.
3. It’s slow
Every second spent looking at a blank screen is a second the visitor might give up. This matters even more on phones, where most people will first meet you. Large images that haven’t been compressed are the usual culprit.
4. It’s a wall of text, or a wall of nothing
Some homepages try to say everything, in long paragraphs that nobody reads. Others say almost nothing: a huge photo, a slogan and a scroll arrow. The sweet spot is short sections, each with a clear heading, that answer one question at a time.
5. There’s no proof
Anyone can say they’re the best. Visitors want evidence: examples of your work, reviews from real customers, logos of businesses you’ve worked with, how long you’ve been doing this. Put a little proof near the top, not hidden on a separate page.
Your homepage isn’t a brochure cover. It’s a signpost.
A simple homepage structure that works
Most effective homepages follow a similar order, because it matches the questions a visitor asks:
- What you do and who it’s for, with your main button.
- Proof, like reviews or examples, so they believe you.
- Your services, each with a short line and a link to its own page.
- How it works, in a few simple steps.
- A little about you, so there’s a human behind the business.
- The next step again, for people who scrolled all the way down.
Our guide to what a small business website should include covers the rest of the site.
How to find out what’s going wrong
You don’t need guesswork. Ask a friend who doesn’t know your business to look at your homepage for five seconds, then close it and tell you what you do. If they can’t, the headline needs work. Free analytics tools will also show you which pages people leave from and how far down they scroll.
Questions people also ask
Should my homepage have a video?
Only if it adds something words and images can’t, like showing a product in use. A video that plays automatically and slows the page down usually does more harm than good.
How long should a homepage be?
Long enough to answer the visitor’s main questions, and no longer. For most small businesses that means five to seven short sections.
Do sliders and carousels help?
Rarely. Most people only see the first slide, and the movement can be distracting. One strong, clear message usually works better than several rotating ones.