Over the years, ecommerce merchants, designers, and developers have experimented with thousands of homepage configurations and these 8 elements are widely understood to be essential to a successful homepage that converts visitors.

• Your logo
• Navigation
• Headline
• CTA
• Social Proof
• Photos
• Page copy
• Footer

8 Basic Elements of A Homepage

Logo

First, your logo. Your logo is the face of your brand. It’s the visual representation of everything you want your customers to remember about your business. It should be displayed consistently and often. Most brands develop guidelines for how their logo should be used so that customers see what they expect to see whenever they encounter your branding in the wild.

Navigation

This is the bar at the top of your website that contains text links to the pages of your website. Designing effective navigation means taking into consideration the journey of each user and audience that frequents your website.

Headline

Your headline is the first line of text a visitor to your website will encounter. For example, on Hostdedi.net our headline is “The (Truly) Managed Commerce & Content Hosting Platform”. Creating a compelling headline is harder than you might think. Summing up the mission and character of an entire organization in one sentence takes time and expertise so don’t be afraid to hit the drawing board over and over.

Call to Action (CTA)

A call to action is a simple phrase, usually displayed on a button, that instructs your visitors on which action to take. On the nexcess.net homepage, for example, our CTA is simply “Speak with an Expert”. Other common CTAs include:

• Buy Now
• Learn More
• Read More
• Chat with Support
• Submit

Social Proof

Social proof is any user generated content including reviews, photos, and testimonials that speaks to the quality of your product or service. By adding social proof to your homepage, you’re demonstrating to prospective customers that your products and services live up to their promise because you have evidence that real people have purchased your goods and are satisfied.

Photos (& Videos)

High quality, well lit product photos of at least 1000px by 1000px are essential for any ecommerce business. Any product photography or videography must be of the highest resolution so it can be displayed on either a desktop or mobile platform.

Page Copy

Words! Other than your headline, what information is displayed on your homepage? This element of homepage design will depend largely on your industry vertical and the number and types of products and services you sell.

Footer

The footer section of a website contains essential information a customer might need to contact either corporate or support. Common elements of a footer include:

• Company address
• telephone number
• email address
• About Us
• Customer Service information
• Links to important pages that aren’t in the Navigation section
• Privacy policy
• Return policy

An Effective Ecommerce Homepage Without Coding

We’ve covered the 8 basic elements that make up a basic ecommerce homepage and there is still a lot to learn about each element, much less how to put them together in the most effective manner.

Now you can take the guesswork out of designing your ecommerce website with StoreBuilder by Hostdedi.

StoreBuilder delivers a fully customized, industry-focused ecommerce homepage template in just a few minutes, using a proprietary AI engine, with no coding required.