How to design a product homepage — fast and good.
Fix your droopy product site in five-ish minutes.
Why do most brands suck? Inhibition. Self-conscious overthinking leads companies toward inaction, dishonesty and dead-ness. To help creatives, strategists and brand executives fight back against inhibition, we’re publishing a series of articles about Fastmaking, the art of tuning out the noise, most of all the institutional superego that all organizations face, to make one thing quickly. Because when you shut out the meetings, the Slack messages, that Obama-eclipsing-Trump meme, and just get it down on paper, magic happens. The thinking brain can’t keep up. All you have to go on is your intuition. And that’s where the best ideas come from.
So. Your product’s homepage: You’ve been talking about it and “designing” for months but the finish line is nowhere in site. Or maybe it’s done but it’s just not very good, because somehow in all the research and the many, many rounds of revisions, something was lost.
Instead of calling another team meeting, why not make it, or re-make it, in 5 minutes? Here’s how.
Get a couple pieces of paper. Draw a series of boxes — the website’s panels — from top to bottom. Try for 6–9 panels. Plus some squiggles for a simple nav at the top and a footer.
Every panel is a moment you get with a user to tell them one important idea. Now, start filling up boxes, like so:
Panel #1: Tell your customer the high-level benefit. This is your positioning in your market. Tell them why your product or service is amazing and what makes it different from what the other companies in your category are offering. In a single headline. Pair that with the best image you have or maybe a product video if you’ve got one.
Panel #2: Tell them exactly what it is. This isn’t about drama or making it exciting. They just need to know what the heck it is, in concrete terms. No fancy lingo.
Panels #3–5: What are 3 high-level features and benefits? Put each one in a panel. These are your “reasons to believe.” They should back up your central positioning — what you told them in panel 1. “It has an app” is not a reason to believe. “The app makes booking just-in-time backrubs ridiculously easy” is a reason to believe.
Panel #6: End with a “call-to-action” panel, then a footer.
Add and subtract panels as you see fit. Add buttons and links where it makes sense. Follow your gut! Just don’t stop to think.
Now look at the page.
Is there a nice balance of visuals and copy?
Is the page cleanly laid out and easy to navigate? Good, now just to be safe, add more negative space and get rid of some words. Confidence is sexy.
One last look: Is the page beautiful? Is it also logical and does it appeal to our emotions?
Is it crystal clear what you’re asking the user to do, be it “buy now” or “learn more” or “sign up for a free backrub”?
If the answer is “yes” to all these questions, you did it. Put that sucker into production and launch it in the next 48 hours. Get ready to sell a bunch of whatever it is you’re selling. And if it doesn’t work, you just learned a valuable lesson about your messaging. Now go make a new homepage and switch things up. It only takes 5 minutes.
By Evan Winchester and Josh Lowman
Gold Front is a creative studio in San Francisco that sometimes makes things fast and good. We help companies find their greatness and tell their story through design, writing, film and more. Email us at evan@goldfront.com or josh@goldfront.com.
