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Discover 6 Shopify Homepage Best Practices & How To Build One With GemPages
Your Shopify homepage is your digital storefront, the first touchpoint where visitors meet your brand. With a few seconds to capture attention, a well-optimized homepage can set you apart.
“55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page,” says Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile.
That’s your window to make an impact now. This blog will explore 6 Shopify homepage best practices and a step-by-step guide on establishing a high-converting layout using GemPages. You don’t need coding skills at the start; everything can be performed with templates.
Right now, keep reading to see what happens below!
Why is your homepage key to first impressions & conversions?
Before grabbing the Shopify homepage best practices, we will clarify the role of homepages in your store’s success. As your brand’s digital storefront, the homepage is often the first interaction a visitor has with you. It sets the tone, builds trust, and guides visitors toward taking action, such as exploring products, signing up for a newsletter, or making purchasing decisions.
According to Forbes, a well-designed user interface can boost conversion rates by up to 200%, and leading Shopify marketers are utilizing this to focus on their Shopify homepage presence. Notably, 75% of respondents admit to making credibility judgments on how a website presents content, and clear messaging, intuitive navigation, and fast loading are key factors to consider. Moreover, nearly half of users expect a website to load in under 2 seconds to continue their action.
In fact, a Shopify homepage doesn’t just look good; it works hard behind the scenes:
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Establish brand credibility within seconds
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Showcase best-selling or new products
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Guide navigation to key pages (collections, about, contact, etc.)
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Encourage conversions with clear CTAs and social proof.
6 Key Shopify homepage best practices
To ensure your homepage works well, it should be strategic and user-focused. Below are the 6 best practices for Shopify homepage design to guide user behavior and boost conversions.
#1. Strong hero section (Headline + CTA)
Our hero section is prime real estate on your Shopify homepage. It’s the first thing customers see and a key driver of first impressions. A great hero should feature a clear, benefit-oriented headline that effectively communicates your brand’s primary offering or message in seconds.
Shopify homepages should have a strong hero section to engage customers at the first touchpoint for their visits.
Unique angle: Using emotional storytelling in headlines can resonate with visitors more deeply. For example, instead of “Shop Now,” try “Find Your Forever Piece Today.” Additionally, personalized call-to-actions can perform 202% better than basic CTAs for more visitors’ clicks. And the CTA buttons should be large enough and mobile-optimized to engage customers better.
How to do it:
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Use a concise headline (e.g., “Sustainable Fashion for a Greener Tomorrow”).
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Place a prominent CTA button in contrasting colors.
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Add a high-quality background image or video to enhance visual appeal.
#2. Clear value proposition
Your value proposition answers the critical question: Why should customers choose you? It’s the cornerstone of your homepage, highlighting what sets your brand apart from the competitors. This message should be placed near the top of your homepage, ideally within the hero section.
Unique angle: It’s ideal to start with weaving a “Why Us” micro-story into value propositions. For instance, a coffee brand could say: “Sourced from farms, every cup for a sustainable future.” Remember that a clear proposition could lead to higher customer retention in your online store.
How to do it:
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Clearly state your unique selling proposition (USP) above the fold
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Use concise language with emphasis on benefits, not features
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Support your value with visuals or icons
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Test different messages to see what resonates with your audience.
#3. Visual hierarchy
The next Shopify homepage best practice is to ensure a strong visual hierarchy to organize your homepage content logically, which helps guide visitors through the most important parts. You should focus on consistent design patterns like font size, contrast, and spacing for this flow.
Shopify homepages have visual hierarchies with clear sections and easy-to-read fonts
Unique angle: It’s interesting to embrace an asymmetrical layout that allows for adding visual intrigue while maintaining page clarity to capture attention in a crowded eCommerce landscape. You can also use scroll tracking tools like Hotjar to see how users interact with your homepage. This reveals whether your current layout aligns with how users consume content or not, which is effective in reshaping or optimizing the placement and priority of sections and content elements.
How to do it:
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Use larger fonts and bold headings to emphasize key messages
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Apply contrasting colors to highlight CTAs and key content
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Create visual breathing room with white space
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Group related content into logical, scannable blocks
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Follow an “F-pattern” or “Z-pattern” layout.
#4. Showcase featured products
Your homepage should offer a curated look into what your store sells. Thus, displaying featured products, like bestsellers or new arrivals, can entice customers to explore your product catalog. This section acts like a storefront window: if the display is attractive, customers are more likely to step inside and shop. It can also help emphasize your business’s uniqueness and strengths.
Unique angle: While this Shopify homepage design best practice is common, it is not easy to succeed. One of the biggest mistakes comes from the lack of tracking consumer behavior. Thus, it’s great to use real-time data to showcase trending or back-in-stock items dynamically. Moreover, you can add an emotional hook to make items more relatable and memorable than ever, like how a brand showcases a yoga mat with “Crafted for Your Daily Zen, Sustainably Made.”
How to do it:
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Highlight 4-8 key products with high-quality images and clear titles
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Add quick-access buttons like “Add to Cart” or “Quick View”
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Display price and key selling points up front (e.g., “Limited Stock”)
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Link directly to product or collection pages
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Update this section seasonally or based on promotions.
#5. Trust signals
According to Baymard Institute, one of the most common reasons for cart abandonment is the lack of site trust with credit information, accounting for 19% of respondents. That’s why the fifth Shopify homepage best practice today is the use of trust signals to handle security concerns.
Social proofs or user reviews are highly powerful trust signals to display
Besides trust badges related to payment information, be aware of others, including customer reviews, press mentions, or money-back guarantees. When visitors see that others have had a positive experience or that there is a safety net, they are more likely to take the leap and shop.
Unique angle: User-generated content (UGC), such as customer photos, feedback, and videos, is a powerful tactic for increasing community trust, especially for first-time visitors to your store. However, ensure that each piece of UGC displayed is honest enough to drive higher conversion rates.
How to do it:
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Add star ratings or short testimonials near featured products
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Showcase logos of media outlets or brands you’ve been featured in
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Include icons for secure checkout, free returns, and satisfaction guarantees
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Embed an Instagram feed or photo carousel of real customers.
#6. Mobile-first design + fast load speed
Statista highlighted that 62.54% of eCommerce traffic will come from mobile devices in 2024; therefore, a mobile-optimized Shopify homepage is essential. Moreover, ensuring a fast loading speed on your Shopify store, including homepages, can effectively reduce the bounce rate. Finally, a quick and highly responsive homepage brings a seamless experience across devices.
Unique angle: You can consider designing your mobile homepage before your desktop version. Mobile users often have different behaviors, which could take more time to adapt their journeys. Incorporating progressive web app (PWA) features, like push notifications, is also worth trying.
How to do it
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Use responsive design with flexible grid layouts and scalable images
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Optimize images and compress files to keep page load time under 2 seconds
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Ensure text is readable without zooming, and buttons are easily tappable
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Avoid too many pop-ups or animations that slow down performance
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Run A/B testing to test the performance of the Shopify homepage versions.
How to level up Shopify homepage performance with GemPages
Now that you’re familiar with the Shopify homepage best practices for a high-converting homepage, it’s a great time to bring those ideas to life. And that’s where GemPages steps in.
What is GemPages?
GemPages is a powerful no-code landing page builder designed specifically for Shopify. Its drag-and-drop editor allows merchants to create their own stunning homepages from scratch. Otherwise, you can take advantage of 200+ CRO pre-designs to save time and effort effectively.
GemPages is a powerful drag-and-drop Shopify page builder to design homepages
Designed to support Shopify homepage best practices, GemPages includes a range of both basic and advanced design elements, from the hero sections to innovative, sticky CTA buttons. In addition to optimizing your Shopify page presence, GemPages is also an expert in A/B testing, helping sellers see which designs perform best and continuously improve their results.
3 Steps to design a Shopify homepage using GemPages
Below is a quick guide to get started with GemPages. If you want to discover more deeply, explore our full guide to Shopify homepage design to have the best preparation for your needs.
Step 1: Install GemPages into your Shopify store
In the Shopify App Store, search for GemPages, and click Install to add it to your Shopify store. Once installed, everyone can start accessing the editor directly from the Shopify dashboard.
You need to search GemPages in the Shopify App Store and click Install to add it
Step 2: Design your Shopify home page
In the GemPages Builder dashboard, click Create new page and hit Home Page. You can select either “Start from scratch” or choose any proper template to start instantly. During your design process, you can freely use the editor to add hero sections, trust signals, and product carousels, as well as customize colors, visuals, animations, and fonts to match your brand.
Note: With GemPages templates, you can click the eye-element button to experience a full demo.
Sellers should preview some template demos to pick the best fit for their demands
In GemPages’ dashboard, click the Home Page section and select Create New Template. Next, you can select either “Start from scratch” or choose any proper template to start instantly. During your design process, you can freely use the Editor to add hero sections, trust signals, product carousels, and customize colors, visuals, animations, and fonts to match your brand.
Note: With GemPages templates, you can click the “Preview” button to experience a full demo.
Sellers should preview some template demos to pick the best fit for their demands
Step 3: Save and publish on your Shopify store
After finishing your Shopify homepage design, click Save to keep all of your customization. Then, select Preview to recheck, click on the Settings icon to open the Publish Settings window, and make some setups on SEO or Header and Footer. Finally, click the Publish to end.
Users need to have some setups with the Publish Settings before officially publishing
Discover example homepage templates built with GemPages
#1. Apparels
This Shopify homepage template engages visitors at first sight with its compelling hero section. It covers colorful visuals, customer reviews, CTA buttons, “New Arrival” navigation, a promotion with a 30% discount, and especially a concise headline, called “Toppers for the Trendy Tribe”. With customers desiring to make themselves stylish and trendy like Gen Z, it is truly excellent!
A vibrant, fully-featured hero section on the Shopify homepage selling stylish toppers
#2. Mommy & Children fashion
Want to warm every parent’s heart? This Mommy & Children Fashion template wraps shoppers in cozy vibes with soft pastels and playful visuals. One of the outstanding points in this GemPages template is the “End of Season Sale” section at the top of the Shopify homepage. This is very important when sellers promote products on Black Friday or other sales holidays.
Shopify homepages for mommy and children's fashion feature a strong visual hierarchy
Besides that, you can find the featured products highlighted with “Everyone’s Loving These” in the next part. “What Our Customers Think” as trust signals are displayed at the page’s bottom.
#3. Beauty & Makeups
This Beauty and Makeup template radiates elegance. It is tailored for established cosmetics brands in the top section that aim to impress visitors at first sight. The hero section highlights your featured products with “Our Best-Seller” and a concise headline, “Be Confident, Be You”. This can showcase your brand’s best offerings and communicate your core message clearly. You can also find the “Our Beauty Blog” section below, an ideal space to share tips for visitors.
Beauty and makeup Shopify templates are a go-to choice of GemPages users
#4. Health Supplements
Because this GemPages Shopify homepage involves wellness, it is designed to be clean, informative, and professional, enhancing customers' trust at first sight. Its hero feature is 5-star customer feedback, “The best Nutritional Concentrate I’ve had,” as a powerful trust signal. Additionally, it highlights the product benefits under short bullet points for easy understanding and a large-sized, colorful button, “Instant Health Boost,” to encourage visitors to take action.
Homepages for health supplements demand informative, professional designs
Notably, the homepage also showcases professional reviews from reputable publications like Forbes, Vogue, and GQ, further reinforcing credibility. And a visual, easy-to-follow 4-step guide is included to show customers exactly how to use the health supplements effectively.
Learn more: 10 Killing Shopify Homepage Examples to Learn in 2024
Conclusion
Your Shopify homepage is the gateway to your brand, where first impressions turn into lasting connections. By applying these Shopify homepage best practices properly, you can create a homepage that captivates, builds trust, and drives conversions. You can even consider powerful tools like GemPages to save time and effort when designing pages by using its CRO templates.
Want more inspiration when selling on Shopify? Explore GemPages blogs for valuable insights!
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