A number of Carleton CMS content editors seek our advice on ways to make their website’s homepage organized and appealing. The homepage creates the first impression to visitors on your website; it can determine whether or not visitors want to continue browsing your website.
Here are the main sections you can edit on your homepage to make it visually appealing.
Banner
Image
This is the first thing that your visitor sees when they visit your homepage. An unappealing banner that is blurry and hard to make out will leave a poor first impression with users, potentially leading to them leaving your site. Therefore, you should ensure that the image you select has a high resolution, is large in size, and reflects the theme of your department. More importantly, the size of your banner picture should be 1600 pixels wide by 700 pixels high.
We give you the option of uploading your own image to use as a banner as well as using our hosted banner images. By visiting the CMS Hosted Banners page, you can save time by using any of these premade hosted page banners. To use one, simply copy the name of your desired image and paste it into the “Banner Hosted Image” field.
Consider darkening the image under “Banner Image Opacity” to make the text you will add more readable.
Heading
The heading is the first piece of text a user reads when they visit your homepage. Add a simple heading that tells visitors what your site has to offer.
Sub-Heading
In a few words, your sub-heading should swiftly describe what your sites does/offers. This text will appear right beneath the heading.
Buttons/Calls-to-Action
Your homepage should act as a springboard that directs users down an intended path throughout your site. To do this, make use of the two buttons you can add to your banner. These buttons should serve as calls-to-action that guide your visitors to where you want them to go. Use these to link to the most popular or integral pages to your site.
To set up or make changes to your banner picture, contact ITS Service Desk.
Homepage Text
This text block should include a brief overview of what your department does and why it matters. Visitors will want to know about the benefits of what you do before trusting in your services. Your goal is to make this text’s description short and sweet within one or two small paragraphs. Use hyperlinks if needed to connect with other internal pages. Think about the key search words and terms people might use and include these in the text.
Quick Links
These three or four quick links grab your visitors’ attention with thumbnails and direct it towards the most useful information that you want to display. Think of what the mission of your site is and use the quick links to direct your visitors to the pages that further this goal. Prioritize your content and find out what interests your visitors the most. Want to know what are the most popular-visited pages of your website? Use Google Analytics to find out. Read our article on Google Analytics for Beginners to learn how to interpret your website’s statistics. If your important pages aren’t very popular, consider how to change your content or the structure of your site to better direct users to them.
Note that the size of the thumbnails should be 300 px wide by 230 px high.
Click here to watch a CMS video tutorial on how to update your homepage quick links.
Contact info
If you aim to maximize interactions with your clients and/or the public, make your contact information or social media links highly visible and easy to find on your homepage.
Listings
News
If you have a blog/news listing that you regularly update on your site, you can include it on your homepage. Presenting a consistent blog is a great way to show how lively your site is to new visitors. Interesting news post topics have the potential to capture the attention of visitors, bringing them deeper into your site.
With CMS, you can select how many news posts you want to display (3-5) on your homepage. Additionally, you have the option of listing all news or picking from one or more of your categories. With this, you can filter out anything unnecessary and list the most important posts directly on your homepage. You can also include a “More News Button” for the readers to load more than the selected number of articles displayed.
Event
Similar to the news listing, if you regularly hold in-person or online events, you can list them on your homepage. Showing your visitors your list of upcoming events will establish your site and your brand’s credibility. As a result, new users will have a higher opinion of you, increasing the likelihood that they’ll use your services.
You can select how many event posts you would like to display (2-8). Much like the news listing, you can list all your events or select specific ones to display by filtering the event types.
Video
Nowadays, it is common for websites to feature video content on their pages. If you have a wealth of videos to show or even if you simply want to display a couple you deem important, then don’t worry because our settings allow for you to do either. We allow you to choose to present all your videos or select specific video types to display on your homepage. Additionally, you can choose how many videos are displayed and if you wanted them presented in a random, most recent, or specific order.
People
If you’d like to display the people profiles of your team members or anyone else on your homepage, you can do so using the People Listing. This feature can help new users learn about the people who help to run the website or department they’re visiting. We recommend avoiding listing people profiles if you have already done so on an “About Us” page.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Lastly, you can choose to display any of the FAQs you’ve previously created on your homepage using the FAQ Listing. FAQ listings are quite useful for new visitors as looking through them often saves them from having to reach out to you for answers. Including an FAQ section indicates to your visitors that your site and brand is credible through your willingness to not only listen to your users’ voices and them on your site.