Hi Reader,

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a redesign for ConvertKit's homepage. While I really like what we have, we last updated it around a year ago, and we've done a lot of great work around clarifying our messaging and building our brand since then. So it's time for something new.

In this issue of the Dispatch, I want to share with you a snippet of some writing from my upcoming marketing design book about what to consider when designing a homepage (it's a draft! So any feedback is very welcome). Also below, I've shared a little exercise I ran with the ConvertKit team to kick off our homepage redesign project. It could be something fun for you to try the next time you approach a major page redo!

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What to consider when designing a homepage

The homepage is the most important page on a marketing website.

It’s a welcome mat for new potential users. It’s your elevator pitch. It’s a map that helps a visitor get where they want to go. And it’s often one of the very first introductions they might have to your brand. Practically speaking it’s also the page on your site that will get the most traffic; from both people who don’t use your product yet, and those who are visiting to sign in to their account or get support.

Because of the impact it can have if done well, the homepage deserves to be the marketing site design project that gets the most care and attention. And in my experience, it usually takes twice as long to get right compared to other pages. Why? Because a homepage is trying to accomplish a lot of things.

It needs to briefly introduce the product to explain what problems it’s solving for which people; so that a visitor can immediately know if they’re in the right place.

It needs to give a clear next step so that anyone who has their interest piqued knows exactly where to go to dive in to the details.

It needs to give a strong sense of who you are as a brand.

It needs to make it easy for existing users to log in to their account, and it doesn’t hurt to remind them why they signed up in the first place too.

And it needs to communicate how you’re different from any competitors as visitors come to your site to make comparisons and choose a solution.

That’s a lot to think about, and a hard balance to get right. So, where do you start? Let’s break it down.

First, think about your homepage header section. Like it or not; the ‘fold’ exists. People scroll, sure, but if you don’t communicate the right message in your header space you’ll severely reduce the amount of scrolling they do. Scrolling down on the homepage is like the visitor saying “okay, let’s give this a chance” and how much of a chance they give you depends on if the messaging and visuals spoke to them in the header or not. You shouldn’t try to cram everything into the header because you’re afraid they won’t scroll far enough to see everything you have to offer. Instead you should have a clear heading that speaks to a core problem your product can help solve and impactful visuals that start to give a sense of what you’re all about. You can’t fit your whole website into a header section, but you can confirm to a visitor that they’re in the right place and that your site is worth scrolling.

What comes next on your page will depend greatly on the problem your product solves and the audience you serve, but it’s a good idea to jot down a list of other content you want to see represented on the page to best communicate your brand, and the value of your product. In general, you can try to work in:

• A product tour (perhaps a very brief one that links to your feature section)
• Some examples of who you’re built for (this could come through in the form of testimonials, case studies, or even demo imagery content)
• Something that backs up who you say you are as a brand (it’s possible to do this through featuring your audience, but it could also be done with content your company produces)

The ConvertKit homepage has been very product-focussed in the past, featuring a winding product tour explaining the main ways we help creators with our software then linking to our features section for more details. Now though, we’re working on strengthening our brand so we’re going to be featuring some of our brand projects on the homepage alongside product info: like Creator Sessions (at-home concerts with behind-the-scenes details on the songwriting process) and the I Am A Creator book. While these don’t explain to a user what our product does, they demonstrate that as a company we are ALL about creators and it’ll build goodwill with creators who visit our homepage.

Call’s to action are of course vital on a homepage – you absolutely have to make it easy for anyone who is convinced to sign up – but I’m a big believer in sending people deeper into your site to relevant pages where they can find more information too. There’s a time and a place for landing pages with no navigation and only one path forward (to signing up), but your homepage is not it. Keeping the main navigation on your homepage makes it easy for account-holders to log in when they visit too.

A homepage can be a really high-pressure design project, but I hope this advice helps you to get started putting a structure in place so that you're not staring at a daunting blank page for too long.

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Running a homepage design jam to generate ideas

Last month I put out an open invitation for anyone on the ConvertKit team to take part in an hour-long brainstorming activity to kick off the work on our new homepage.

I told them all to bring a pen and paper (either physical or digital) and their ideas for what we should put on our new homepage. I had people from a few different teams join in the fun; and despite the fact that only two of us were designers, everyone embraced the idea of drawing wireframes to share their ideas.

To get them feeling comfortable (because a lot of people who aren't designers feel like their drawing abilities won't be good enough to take part), I shared an example of a wireframe I'd drawn recently to show them that the bar was very very low for drawing quality 😅

I also prepared a slide to show on screen during our allotted 10 minutes of individual drawing time with prompts and things for them to think about to jumpstart ideas.

I played music during our drawing time for everyone on the Zoom call, and then we then went around the virtual-room for everyone to talk through their ideas.

I was grinning like an idiot throughout, because I was so proud of how every single person came up with truly great ideas in such a short space of time. We quickly started to see patterns in the things people considered important to feature, but we also saw some unique ideas that I hadn’t even considered previously.

It was a truly valuable activity for me as the person leading the design of the homepage to get help generating ideas, and hear other points of view on what it means to introduce ConvertKit to someone new. But it was also a fun activity for everyone else who showed up. They got to be a part of the process and have their ideas heard, and because so many of them aren’t designers they got a bit of a break from their usual work and learned to flex a new skill.

I’m definitely going to be doing this again for future major page redesigns, and I’d strongly recommend you try it too. Hopefully the prompts I gave my team can help you put something in place to spark ideas with yours.

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Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for snippets of this homepage redesign project in future vlogs, and I’ll likely get in to streaming some of the design process on my Twitch channel soon too.

Have a good week!

Charli