The home is where the heart is and for landing page entries into websites, the home page is repeatedly the highest traffic page for organic search visitors and other non-paid marketing channels.
A home page can cater to many business-critical functions including:
- Making a positive first impression.
- Driving user journeys into conversion funnels.
- Helping people find what they need.
- Showcasing new incentives to buy.
- Reinforcing trust, expertise, and authority.
- Catching all topic areas that do not currently have dedicated destinations on the website.
- Revealing cornerstone content.
Let’s explore 25 of the best examples of home pages with some snippets of insight into what makes them work so well.
1. Expensify
This home page example demonstrates making the complex simple combined with the ability to confidently tap into your audience personas with a simplistic message and single association to the brand.
While many home pages look to service a multitude of user intent and action-taking, Expensify has distilled this back to a powerful concept driven by their audience.
2. Help for Heroes
Community-led and audience aware home pages pose numerous challenges for businesses.
In this UK charity website home page example, Help for Heroes creatively combines both motivations for user action and reinforcement of the charity purpose.
Strong visual elements and emotively charged messaging work hand in hand for this effective landing destination.
3. Google Trends
Bringing data and insight to the masses, you need zero familiarity with the website to make the most out of Google Trends.
The Google Trends home page demonstrates user empowerment through design and clearly led user experience to facilitate stress-free action taking and practical outcomes.
Visually the site puts outcomes before impact which is what makes the site function as well as it does.
4. Decibullz
A multi-layered and structured home page that maximizes segment-specific marrying of powerful design and marketing messages.
As you scroll through the home page you can almost put checks against many of the well documented best practices for home page design spanning creative and marketing mediums.
5. TED
The TED homepage embodies the company mission for sharing of information, ideas, and interests in an easy to digest, accessible fashion.
Content is themed into playlists, latest, creative, ideas, and other taxonomies such as ‘small world’.
6. PayPal
A perfect example of quick filtering for an expansive group of people personas.
Features include fast user association and segmentation with easy to process visual support triggers.
7. Titan Storage Solutions
I often look at websites with an SEO hat on, and this home page example delivers many best-practice items that are embedded in that mindset.
This includes:
- Trust signals including social proof.
- Clear CTA.
- Functional navigation.
- Well-organized page structure.
- Clearly define headings.
- Local optimization.
- Mixed content types.
8. StackOverflow
The entry into the top 25 home page examples, warrants its place, based upon well-planned information architecture and scannable content which gives users an enjoyable experience.
Function and ‘fit for purpose’ are understated home page virtues which this site brings to the fore.
9. Middlesex University London
Home pages with purposeful design solve pain points.
This example showcases the solution to the common problem facing information-rich websites that have vast quantities of user-generated content, research papers, and experiential content.
That pain point is enabling fast access to content to service varied user intent as efficiently as possible.
This home page works based on the incorporation of intelligent design, chatbot technology, and obvious provision of primary audience user journey’s.
10. FatFace
When a brand clearly understands its audience the home page delivers a sense of belonging.
It is the simplistic design and messaging, with an added focus on the community the brand associates most with, which led to the home page success in this instance.
11. eBay
Large ecommerce sites can be notoriously challenging for home page design, functionality, and user experience.
Not surprisingly the eBay approach to continuous refinement and tailoring of content and design based on user behavior and historical interaction, make this entry into the best of breed home page designs almost a default inclusion.
12. Sprout Social
A home page should:
- Tell people what you do.
- Lead people to your core content.
- Enable people to convert quickly.
- Reinforce trust.
- Make a connection with the audience.
The Sprout Social home page does all of this.
13.Foresters Friendly Society
Making financial services uncomplicated and accessible to a spectrum of users is no small feat.
Yet from the moment the home page loads you gain a sense of familiarity and fun.
Technically the page is fast to load, works great on mobile devices, and facilitates easy access to the information you may be interested in.
Supplemental benefits include the product tool for helping financial novices get started.
14.Dropbox
Getting B2B home page engaging, interactive, and fun is no small feat.
The clickable elements of the home page help to tell the drag and drop functionality of the service Dropbox provide.
Headlines are emotive and supporting statements are clear.
15. Nescafe
The sense of experience, joy, and an all-inclusive feeling of fun almost make you forget the ecommerce element to this website (but not quite).
It is the not-so-subtle messaging of “people before products” which led to this home page example making it into this best of breed top 25 website home pages.
16. Airbnb
People landing on the Airbnb home page want a quick experience that reinforces why they are here and enables them to book a break as quickly as possible.
This home page serves the Airbnb audience perfectly.
The simple short form makes the booking and filtering fast and intuitive, plus the dominant image makes me want to book a unique experience.
17. Ontrack
Websites that provide emergency and unexpectedly required help and support must reinforce trust, provide immediate access to contact, and solve problems from the first meaningful home page interaction.
Visually, the home page needs to drive action taking and fuel the right choice to minimize already stressful situations.
18. Skype
This home page example is clean of distractions, clear functionality, plus the design is paired with purposeful benefit reinforcement to the user, offering easy inclusion into the sales funnel.
I love to see simple, effective outcomes that showcase data-driven design and total audience understanding.
19. UCFB
The home page elements that stand out include:
- Responsive content delivery.
- Easy action-taking.
- Specific CTA that is inclusive of the audience.
- Trust reinforcement.
- Image and text triggers working together.
- Easy search functionality.
- Non-intrusive navigation.
20. Basecamp
At first glance, Basecamp home pages can feel cluttered and challenging for a visual experience.
When you consider the purpose of Basecamp as a service and the elements contained within the home page, you start to see the role each item plays.
- The headline positions the brand and service.
- The cluttered home page tells the story of why you may invest in the service.
- The dominant CTA jumps out of the page.
- Home page screenshots provide an instant demo of the solution.
21. Plex
Media sites user base have high standards and expectations for creative, fast, and functional websites.
Plex supplies easy to digest content whilst keeping text levels to a minimum.
The use of image, media, and text interaction supports audience preference and all device action-taking.
There are clever CTAs in place which help to mitigate any over sales sentiment form the page.
22. Silicone Engineering
B2B sites that operate in technical niches poses a few unique home page challenges.
The display of content to enable logical access to content is one of them.
Another is the need to reinforce expertise accurately spanning complex subject matters.
This scrolling home page gives users bespoke design creative segments, plus effective content filtering.
23. Ahrefs
The justification for Basecamp being included in this best of breed home page top 25 applies equally to Ahrefs.
Added to this, Ahrefs has a stronger color contrast, although the CTA is not as dominant as the Basecamp example discussed in point 20.
24. Amara
Competition is fierce with online home and lifestyle shopping ecommerce stores.
The Amara homepage immediately provides instruction, information, and incentive in a classic and meaning way.
The user seeks easy product discovery, a reason to click, and motivation to buy (rather than continue with the consideration process) – this home page covers all of this and more.
25. Slack
Everything on the Slack home page shouts out collaboration, people, and getting started.
The core functionality of a home page is to make things simple.
From messaging, images and words used, the Slack home page aligns, integrates and works.
More Resources:
- 25 Amazing Contact Us Pages That Will Make You Rethink Your Website
- 25 of the Best Examples of Effective FAQ Pages
Image Credits
All screenshots taken by author, November 2019
Category Digital Experience