Happy New Year, and welcome to the official Divi Sacramento Meetup blog! Whether you landed here via our Meetup page announcements, or by recently attending one of our meetings, we’re pleased that you have joined us. This is where we’ll post recaps of our monthly topic meetings. In addition, this will be the place where we will share our own helpful Divi and web design tips, and provide resources recommended by us and our Meetup members.

If there is a Divi-related topic of which you are interested in learning more, write a comment below, or send us a message via our Meetup page. We encourage you to attend not only our monthly topic meetings, but also our monthly Q&A meetings, where you can gain valuable assistance from our collective Divi community.

November 2021: Home Page Content and Design

To kick off our monthly recaps, here’s what we covered in our last topic meeting from November, 2021.

Meeting Intro:

There is a rhyme and reason to what you put on the home page of a website. While a home page does, and should, give a website visitor a clear idea of what the site (i.e. business or service) is about, it is also not a page that should be saturated with content.

So what goes into creating an effective home page?

In this meeting, Rosalinda will lead a presentation/discussion about:

• Why a home page is important
• User Experience (or UX) when it comes to home page design
• The types of content to include on a home page
• Differences between a home page and a landing page
• Divi home page layouts to get you started

Why is a home page important?

• It’s a summary of your site, and provides snippets of your website as a whole. Think of it like a “table of contents”.
• While it may serve as a “front door” to a website, it is not always the primary point of entry into a website.

UX and home page design

• Don’t clutter the home page. Remember, it’s a summary that should give visitors a clear picture of what the website is about.
• It is not a page to dump everything that’s on the other pages.
• Use links to the rest of your site from the highlights you place on this page.
• Everything needs to make sense and tell a story (ex. If the site is for a business that provides a service, or services, it should be clear what those are, why someone would need them, and calls-to-action).

Types of home page content

An example scenario could be:

Someone does a Google search for “business consultant Sacramento”, and down the list on the first page of the search results is an ambiguous name, which may or may not be for a local business consultant. If the person clicks on the link what type of information is presented to give the visitor a clear picture that it the site is for a local business consultant, and not for, say, a retail store.

Not all of the following types of content need to be included on every website, because each website requires its own specific layout and information. (A bakery, for instance, will not need a stats section or a portfolio, whereas a law firm might.)

• Navigation
• Banner/hero image/header
• Intro (what you do, and/or how it works)
• Stats (percentages, graphs, infographic)
• Portfolio (could include client logos or a list of noted clients or customers)
• Testimonials (this could be used in combo with Portfolio, or used in lieu of a Portfolio)
• Contact and Social Media links
• Footer

Home page vs. Landing page

While a home page is part of a full website (remember the table of contents, or front door?), a landing page is not part of a website, but an external page that is used for marketing purposes.

Think of it this way – if the home page is the summary of a site, then the landing page is a snippet of a “chapter” (a page) of the site. The landing page is the poster child for a specific product, service, etc. that you are specifically marketing. It can lead a visitor to the main site.

Divi home page layouts can help you get started

Explore the pre-made Divi layouts to get ideas. Not all layouts are ideal – some that are meant for another category might actually work better for the site you’re building. While almost all Divi layouts contain the same modules, they are arranged differently to give you an idea of how you can include your own custom content on the page.

Pro tip: Build the home page last. Think of that book. How would you know how to set up the table of contents if you don’t know what the content of the book is first?

Resources:

• https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/divi-resources/23-divi-websites-that-have-unique-page-layouts
• https://www.fatbit.com/fab/9-homepage-design-practices-improve-usability-ux/
• https://inkbotdesign.com/best-homepage-design-practices/
• https://inkbotdesign.com/anatomy-of-a-homepage-part-1/
• https://lineardesign.com/blog/landing-page-vs-homepage/
• https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/information-architecture/information-ux-architect/