Your homepage gets about 10 seconds. Here is what to put in them.

In 2010 three researchers at Microsoft looked at how long people stay on web pages. Chao Liu, Ryen White and Susan Dumais studied more than 2 billion visits to 205,873 pages. The chance that someone leaves a page was highest in the first 10 seconds. People who were still there after about 30 seconds tended to stay for minutes. That makes homepage design mostly a question of what goes first.

Jakob Nielsen put it plainly for designers a year later: if you want several minutes of someone’s attention, you have to make your case in about 10 seconds. In an earlier study he had looked at how much people read. On an average visit, people read at most 28 percent of the words on a page, and 20 percent is more likely.

So the first screen of a homepage does most of the work. Most people will not read the rest unless that screen gives them a reason to.

Homepage design: what the first screen has to answer

When we plan a homepage, we write down the questions a first-time visitor has before we draw anything. For most businesses there are three.

1. What do you do, and is it for someone like me?
2. Why should I believe you?
3. What do I do next?

The headline answers the first one. Say what you make or sell in plain words, the way a customer would describe it to a friend. “We design and build websites, stores and web apps” tells people where they are. “Building tomorrow’s digital experiences” could belong to anyone.

The line under the headline narrows it down: who it is for, or the one thing that makes you different. One sentence is enough.

Proof goes close to the claim, where the eye already is. A strip of client logos, a rating with the number of reviews behind it, or one result with a number in it. Something a visitor can check does more than any adjective.

Then one main action. If the first screen has four buttons of the same weight, people have to stop and choose, and some of them choose to leave. Pick the action that matters most and make the others quieter.

What to take off the first screen

Rotating banners. Few people wait for the second slide, so the message they get is whichever one happened to be showing.

Long welcome paragraphs. If people read about a fifth of the words, a 120-word introduction gets about 24 of them read, and you do not get to choose which 24.

Vague claims. Words like “passionate”, “innovative” and “quality-driven” appear on nearly every competitor’s site, so readers skip straight past them.

Write for people who skim

Below the first screen, people scan. They read headings, the first words of lines, numbers and links. So we write section headings that work on their own. “Websites your team can edit” says something even if it is the only line someone reads. “Our approach” says nothing.

Short paragraphs help. So do lists for things that really are lists, and numbers written as digits, because digits stand out in a block of text.

A test you can run this afternoon

You do not need a lab for this. Open your homepage on a phone, hand it to someone who does not know your business, and take it back after 10 seconds. Then ask them:

• What does this company do?
• Who is it for?
• What would you tap next?

If two or three people give you the same right answers, the first screen works. If they guess, rewrite the headline before you touch the design. Most homepage problems we see start as word problems.

Our website design service plans homepage design around these questions, and a UX audit can test the one you have now.