Is an overload of content on your homepage obscuring the key messaging of your business website?

While there exist plenty of functional and eye-catching features, your own site doesn’t necessarily need to employ them all at once.

In fact, the purpose of this Web Design Wednesday is to explain why you should take care to do the opposite if you want a homepage that really does its job.

Ask yourself this question: "How many people land on your website for the first time and start running for the hills without leaving you their forwarding address?"

Tim Ash, CEO of Sitetuners, a landing page optimization and conversion consulting company, elaborates on a commonplace problem on many company websites in answering this fundamental question.

In a recent post for Web Marketing Today, Ash compares the predicament of a homepage clogged with graphics, videos, opt-in forms, products, and ads to the “tragedy of commons” situation in which too many shepherds’ flocks are allowed to graze in a single field and consequently end up killing off the grass permanently.

Similarly, allowing the individual interests of your advertisers, sales department, human resource managers, and your graphic designers can stifle the key content you need your prospective customers to notice. Like I’ve pointed out before, if everything pops, nothing will, and your users will find themselves frustrated by their inability to find information on what your brand has to offer them. This means low conversion and high bounce rates.

However, remedying content clog simply means working backwards and trimming a site down to reflect the core message of your business.

Just as they say that writing is rewriting, oftentimes constructing a website means deconstructing what one of my Los Angeles web design clients brings to me in the first place. Remember that the reason you have a homepage to begin with is to get users off it by motivating them to dig deeper in your site and learn more about what you do and why you’re good. “The homepage should be like a signpost,” as Ash aptly puts it, “The sooner it inspires action, the better.”

In order to achieve this, you need to get your various departments and contributors, as well as your designers, to reach a balanced consensus as to what goes on the homepage so that it’s not a wild orgy of billboards, banners, buttons, and animation.

When deciding how to go about cleaning house, keep in mind that aesthetics take a backseat to business purpose and that if a particular feature doesn’t directly supportive of boosting your conversion rate, it can go.