What to put on your homepage: what visitors need to see in the first ten seconds

When visitors open a company's homepage, they spend the first ten seconds looking for three answers: what this company does, how well it does it, and where to click next. If all three are easy to find, visitors keep reading. If one is missing, many of them close the page.

So a homepage isn't a collection of company information. It's a guide laid out around those three questions. Below, we go through what belongs on each screen, from top to bottom.

First screen: say who you are in one sentence

The first screen has one job: tell visitors what kind of company this is and who it works for.

• One positioning statement. Make it a concrete sentence, such as "Strategy, design and development of websites, mini programs and apps for brands and institutions." Slogans like "crafting outstanding digital experiences" are forgotten as soon as they are read, and say nothing about what you do.
• One representative image. A single visual from a project that shows your standard is stronger than a collage of ten thumbnails.
• One primary button. "See our work" or "Contact us": choose one as the main button rather than lining up four or five.

Search engines and AI assistants also use this positioning statement as a summary, so it's best to use the same sentence on the homepage, the About page and other platforms. We explained why in How to make your website easier for search engines and AI to cite.

Second screen: prove quality with case studies

Once visitors believe what you do, they immediately ask: is it any good? This screen answers with evidence.

• Two or three representative projects. Choose projects close to your target clients, each with one sentence on the client, industry and deliverables. For example, the website for the China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival and the app and website for Fortune China speak to two different needs: event platforms and media content.
• Client names or a logo wall. Publicly disclosed client names persuade better than any adjective, and grouping them by industry makes them easier to read.
• Links to full case study pages. The homepage carries only a summary; the detail belongs on the case study page. For how to write one, see How to write a case study page.

Third screen: service entry points, organized by visitors' questions

Visitors arrive with specific questions: "Can they build a mini program?" "Do they make apps?" Organize service entry points by the types of service visitors ask about. Each one gets a sentence on what problem it solves and leads to the relevant case studies and details.

Don't split services into a dozen technical terms. Visitors may not know what "information architecture" or "interaction design" means, but they know whether they need a website, a mini program or an app.

Last screen: make contact details easy to find

At the bottom of the homepage, give direct contact details: a business email address, your city, and a link to a contact page. Keep form fields to a minimum: the type of project and how to reach the person are enough. Everything else can wait for the first conversation.

What doesn't need to be on the homepage

• Company history, team photos and certificates. Put them on the About page. On the homepage, mentioning the year you were founded is enough.
• Every case study. Show two or three on the homepage; the rest go in the case study list, filterable by industry and service type.
• Long lists of news. If you don't update often, a "latest news" item from six months ago on the homepage works against you.

Cutting back the homepage makes those three first-ten-second answers clearer. The rest of the information doesn't disappear; it simply sits where visitors will look for it when they need it.

FIM's services cover information architecture, web design, front-end and back-end development, and SEO. You can see some of our work on the Digital experience page.