Home Page Setup

Home Page Setup

Please note: this article is only applicable to websites built after November 2018.

This article covers how to set up your home page for optimal viewing and search engine rankings.

In this article:

Considerations/Prerequisites

  • You can add as many rows as you need but take care not to make your website look too busy.
  • Each row can contain up to 3 widgets.
  • You can give rows a coloured background or use an image as the background if you wish but bear in mind accessibility.

Detail

  1. Consider planning your preferred layout before you start adding elements to save yourself time.
  2. Personalise your site by adding your practice logo and images of the practice or surrounding area.
  3. Add an Information widget containing concise, pertinent welcome text in the top row for best search engine optimisation. Summarise your service in one paragraph for best results.
  4. Less is more! Use your home page for introductory text and KEY announcements only. Keep the text as short and relevant as possible as search engines will also use the home page headers and text when cataloguing your website.
  5. Put your latest news on a latest news page. Use a catchy headline with a link to the news feature.
  6. Use the widgets to easily add non-text elements such as your opening hours, CQC rating/report, social media feeds, images or videos.
  7. Carefully plan the arrangement of elements so as not to overload the home page or detract from the information you really need your patients to see.
  8. Avoid using a lot of different colour blocks, background images and text colours. It looks messy and can be difficult for visually impaired people. If you need to emphasise something, simply make it bold.

Dos and Don’ts

  • Do keep your home page as minimal as possible. Most viewers won’t scroll down more than twice before moving on.
  • Don’t copy images from Google and insert them into your website. These may look good but images placed on your website must be licensed for your use or be your own images. If they are not you may find yourself in receipt of a fine or legal proceedings (this has happened to several practices already with fines of £750 upwards).
  • Do keep in mind dimensions of images. When adding your own photos please bear in mind the dimensions and orientation required for the element you are adding them to (eg. portrait, landscape, panoramic). The image needs to be of a similar size and orientation, or capable of being cropped to such dimensions, to fit correctly and look good.
  • Do crop and resize your images before uploading them to your website. This helps with managing the image on the page and also helps with page loading time. (Pixlr Express is a really simple and easy to use online photo editor). You can also do this in Paint which is included with Windows as standard.
  • Do, when adding a link, set the text in the link to be something descriptive (eg. “download the form”, “see our map” rather than the using the file name. This looks better and also makes your website much easier for visually impaired users to navigate.
  • Use header styles only for titles and headlines. Use paragraph style for the bulk of your text. This helps to keep the page tidy and is better for visually impaired users who may be using screen readers. It is also better for search engines as they will think your website is spamming them if you use headers for the bulk of your text.
  • Don’t set the font in individual elements on the page. This can be controlled throughout the site from the Customise section.

Common Problems/Mistakes

I’ve got lot of different fonts and sizes in the text on my page.
Remove formatting from text copied from Word (or other websites). If you are copying and pasting content from another source, such as another website or a Word document, paste the text into Notepad first, then recopy and paste it into the website editor. This removes any formatting code and you can then use the proper editor tools to correctly format your content for the website. You can also use the Remove Formatting button on the text area toolbar.

Common Questions/FAQs

Finding your way around
Row and Widgets - An overview
Working with Rows
Using Widgets

Keywords/meta tags

home, set-up, relevant, pertinent, simple, organised, layout, accessible

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