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Impress with an Effective Homepage

Someone building an effective homepage on their laptop with stats.

Your website’s homepage plays an important role. It’s the first impression of your business’ digital space. It also doesn’t have a lot of time to provide that introduction. The average user stays on a webpage for only 5.94 seconds and they judge it in only 1/20th of a second. As a result, your homepage needs to be purposefully designed to create a proper impression quickly. For that, it needs to look good, communicate effectively, and motivate your visitor to stay and use your site. Our website design team has the first steps so you can start building that impressive and effective homepage. 

Who Are You?

Your homepage should clearly and concisely present what your business is and does. Name and display your main services or top products as the central thing visitors first see as they land on your homepage. They will immediately understand your business and see its products/services. This should also come with a short description that identifies your business’ name and what it does. First-time visitors to your site will not be familiar with your business. Use this opportunity to provide that information and show off your value proposition.

Navigable

Along with explaining who you are and what you can provide your visitors, you want to make it immediately clear how they can navigate your site for more information or products. Link the central images and descriptions to the appropriate dedicated pages so visitors can access them. The top should include a navigation bar with clear categories and page titles, so users know where to look and find what they are interested in. In addition to being a directional aid throughout your website, the navigation bar will quickly impress any visitor with the contents of your website, allowing them to understand its contents and services more quickly. Furthermore, your homepage will regularly be the return point for browsing. This easy navigation will ensure customers can readily move to the next page that interests them.

Calls To Action

Another aid to navigation that also helps keep a visitor interested is a call to action (CTA). Common examples are a prominent button in the middle of the page or in the navigation bar with a unique, contrasting colour. These will encourage your visitor to go beyond the homepage and guide them through your website’s main pages. The most common examples are “Shop Now”, “Learn More”, “Contact Us”, “Book a Consultation”, or “Request a Quote”. These short, simple instructions will also help a visitor immediately contextualize the products/services your website provides.

Newsletter or Contact Form

Presenting your visitor with a pop-up of a newsletter signup or contact form is an additional call to action that will keep your visitor connected to your website. These allow customers to learn more about your business, stay connected and return, and might include a discount as an incentive to purchase from you. 

Do not present this pop-up right away. Allow your customers to get their impression of your homepage and maybe browse a bit before prompting them with signing up to their newsletter or suggesting they provide contact information. An immediate popup will prevent them from seeing your informative homepage and come off as pushy. Why would they sign up for a newsletter or want to contact you before they know who you are?

Less is Better

Not overwhelming your visitor is essential. Minimalism is a hallmark for designing your website’s homepage. A homepage with too much text, images, video, or CTAs will only confuse or frustrate your visitors. Just like when first introducing yourself, stick to the essentials and be concise for a good first impression. Provide a single large image, a short blurb, and one CTA that shows the essentials of your business. Not every visitor will have the same interests about your business, so it is best to provide the basics and have them navigate deeper in for what they want. Additional details should be placed in their own dedicated pages that visitors can easily access through the navigation bar or calls to action. 

Optimized for Multiple Devices aka Responsive

A proper first impression means your website needs to function properly on various devices, particularly computers and mobile devices. As of this month, over 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Your homepage needs to inform your visitor, allow direct navigation, and provide direction easily and elegantly on all of those different devices. If a visitor arrives on your homepage and not everything is visible or navigation is cumbersome or impossible, they will be left with a poor impression of your business and leave.

Adaptable

Your homepage should adapt to how visitors use and browse your website. Monitor website traffic to determine where users are going. If a specific service or product page is more popular, highlight it more immediately. This will sooner impress future visitors with the information they want. Remember you have less than 6 seconds. For example, if customers typically browse your new product page, it is a good strategy to link the “Shop Now” CTA to that page. Running user experience (UX) tests of your homepage and website will help you discover such potential site traffic patterns as well as unintended obstacles. Ever heard of heatmapping? Ask us about it!

Home is Where the Heart Is

Your homepage is the heart of your website. It introduces your business, directs visitors, and acts as the regular return point for browsing. It also does not have a lot of time to impress your visitors to stay and start exploring the deeper chambers of your website. These essentials will help guide you to create a homepage that gives the proper impression and welcomes your visitors. If you are looking to redesign or update your homepage to give your business the proper introduction it deserves, contact Rosewood’s website design team.  

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Rosewood’s 2022 Year in Review

The Rosewood team reviews all they accomplished in 2022

After a relaxing and celebratory holiday break, the Rosewood team are back and busy at our desks in our various offices today, and 2023 is proving to be as exciting as its predecessor. We’re excited for all the amazing projects this new year is bringing and anxious to get started, but first, we’re taking an opportunity to review and reflect on the incredible year and successes the Rosewood team and our clients have shared in 2022. 

Rosewood Grew in Team Members and in Service Offerings

Overall, 2022 proved a productive and fruitful year for us and our clients. Rosewood saw growth in all divisions of our company and reached some fantastic milestones. We grew to over 120 active clients and white-labeled for 5 other agencies. We also started a new nonprofit fundraising platform in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications. Our Canada-wide team even met up this Fall and spent some quality time together for a photoshoot and day of fun.

Rosewood Rebranded to Serve Our Clients Better

Rosewood saw some exciting changes and developments alongside our growth in 2022. In November we celebrated our seventh anniversary. It’s astonishing how much Rosewood has grown and changed over the years. To match our development, in August of this past year we launched our rebrand with Rosewood 2.0. Our loyal peacock departed for a new logo look and feel. To match the growth of our services over those years, we also took the opportunity to clarify our company core values, mission and vision. Along with that new look, we implemented a new target audience and social media strategy. We’re still growing and changing and will soon be launching a whole new website that better reflects Rosewood’s path forward. 

Rosewood Welcomed a New Account Coordinator

2022 was certainly a year of news for Rosewood. To better organize our wide swath of projects, we implemented a new project management system through Monday.com. That was spearheaded by another new at Rosewood. We brought on our newest team member Paige as an Account Coordinator to our clients and to support Rosewood internally. Paige has been an incredible addition to our team. Her passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and her penchant for planning has been vital for customizing Monday.com’s setup for each division and their specific needs to ensure the utmost streamlining for everyone.

Speaking of our divisions, they also have plenty to boast about for their 2022s. 

Here are just a select few of their wins from 2022:

Websites:

  • Designed and launched more than 25 new websites
  • Completed over 640 updates and requests
  • 18 new clients signed on for maintenance for regular updates, optimal functionality, and high-quality content from our expert web team
  • Developed a new fundraising platform for nonprofits in collaboration with Graf-Martin Communications

Ads:

  • Our advertising team produced a nearly 20x return on advertising spend (ROAS) which also produced a customer acquisition of up to 6x for some of our clients
  • Ads team was able to generate over 7,300 visits to just one of our client’s websites
  • One client’s ads reached nearly 71,000 people, and another was seen a staggering 312,646 times

Digital Media:

  • Created and published well over 1100 posts 
  • Numerous new clients signed up for our social media services to improve their business’ discoverability, reach, and authenticity
  • Successfully increased clients’ reach through social media to develop high-profile partnerships, including two from the ground up

Catch the Ace:

  • Helped nonprofits raise over $500,000 to support community programs

Misc.:

  • We successfully put our heads together to solve an escape room during our team building day
  • Our Director of Digital Media, Georgie, became a proud mother to the first Rosewood Baby (and she’s adorable)

It proved to be an eventful and accomplished year, but we’re even more eager to continue our work and growth into 2023. We have some new services that we’re excited to announce soon. Keep an eye on our social channels for updates. For now, we hope you all are also having a good start to the new year. Thank you all for being a part of this past year, and we’re looking forward to sharing in success this year.

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Are You Ready to Build a Website?

Dasha from the Web Design Team at Rosewood sits at her desk

Today, every business needs a website. It allows potential customers or clients to learn about your service, contact you, view, and book services, and/or purchase products. When starting a new business, building its website is one of the first things you should do. 

Creating and designing a website, however, takes a lot of skills and knowledge that you probably don’t have time to dedicate yourself to, especially since you’re running your business. Hiring a team to design, build, and maintain your website gives you a professional and effective website without you sacrificing your time where it matters most. Our web design team creates professional, beautiful, functional, and accessible websites that suit your business. Before they can start designing, there will be a few things you will need to do. Here are all the essentials you need before you meet with Rosewoods’ team, and they start designing the website that perfectly represents and serves your business.

Registering a Domain

In order for you to start a website, your business will need a domain name. The domain is the main address that points to your website. google.com, wikipedia.org, and rosewoodmarketing.ca are all examples of domain names. There can be a lot that goes into coming up with a domain, like whether you want a .com, .ca, or another top-level domain. Two quick standards to remember is that shorter and memorable are better, and ensure it aligns with your brand’s name.

However, you can’t just create and have a domain. It needs to be available and registered. To see if a domain is available and how much it will cost, use a registry service, like GoDaddy. A domain will cost you an annual fee to register and retain. If the domain is new, it will be a nominal cost, but already registered domains can cost significantly more. However, if your new domain gains value and you decide you want to sell it, GoDaddy provides this option. 

Content

To build your website, it will need content: pictures, text, graphics, etc. Gather and create/commission all the materials you want for your website. If you’re not sure what to include, look at the websites of similar businesses to get a sense of the kind of content you need. An “about us” write up, contact information, location, availability, information about the services or products you provide, and a gallery of your store or examples of your work are all standards.

Logo and Branding

Often when starting your business, after the countless hours of picking the right, and available, name then comes the struggle of just the right logo. It’s the icon that will represent your business on all its communication channels. It will also be a main image on your website so it’s essential you have it ready beforehand. Along with your logo, you will need your branding. Your branding determines your business’ aesthetic. A marketing team will use these colours, fonts, and voice/tone to design a perfectly representative website.

Pictures Really Are Worth a Thousand Words

A lot of your website’s content will be visual to give a full impression of your business. There are two main options to give your website professional pictures. One more immediate option is to create a collection of stock images. Only pick those that reflect your business’ brand and aesthetic, or else the images will feel disingenuous. Alternatively, book a photoshoot to get professional pictures for your site. These will give your website a more accurate and authentic reflection of your business. Fortunately, Rosewood also provides brand photography. Let us know if this is something you would like to add to build your website.

Get a Google Business Profile

Google Business is one of the essential places you need to be listing your business. By creating a Google Business Profile, your business will populate in Google searches, and you can directly connect your website to the profile. You can also post the same pictures from your photoshoot here. This profile will help optimize your new website for Google searches so that more people discover your business and visit the website.

A Website Hosting Provider

A domain allows users to get to your website by entering the address in their browser, but your actual website and all its content will need to be hosted on a server that people can access. You will need to subscribe your domain to a hosting service that will keep your website up. There are numerous hosting services available, but your marketing and website design team can recommend a hosting provider. We recommend Cloudways or use our affiliate link with Siteground.

Connecting with a Marketing Team

The expertise of a marketing team like Rosewood’s can help you strategize the most effective sections, social media connections, and content plans like blogs and email marketing for your business’ website. They can also help you with content and branding, and help you determine the best combination that will perfectly suit your business and properly contend with any competition. Contact our marketing team for help strategizing your website.

You are ready to build a website!

Once you have these materials prepared, you’re ready to have a website built and designed. Our website design team will take all these and create mockups for your approval. Once approved, you’ll soon see your website starting to come to life. Ready to start the design process? Contact Rosewood’s website design team today!

Papers with drawings and mockups for website design
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