E-commerce Homepage: 4 Best Practices for Promotions (+ Examples)

Your e-commerce homepage is often the first thing your visitors see, so it's a crucial place to showcase promotions and make sure your merchandising is on point. After all, potentially 67% of your visitors can make unplanned purchases based on a promotion. To help you get started, consider these best practices with examples to convert visitors to your e-commerce homepage to customers.

1. Keep It Simple

Simplicity is key when it comes to your e-commerce homepage promotions. If your text and visuals are too busy or confusing, you'll lose the critical window of opportunity to capture and keep your customers' attention. This window is extremely short—just 3 seconds.

But when you have a clear, consistent, and concise message, you're able to drive your customers through the funnel quickly and more efficiently. They'll know exactly what the offer is and what they need to do next.

Amazon: No-Frills Promotions

Amazon's "Today's Deals" page does a great job of this. The page starts with categories of products, including a crisp photo with a white background to represent each category. This helps users to easily navigate to the types of products they're looking for.

This visual merchandising strategy continues down the page, with intuitive organization, clear photos, descriptive titles, and badges that show the percentage discount.

» Enhance your visual merchandising to create an engaging e-commerce experience

2. Highlight the Value Proposition

It's critical that right off the bat, your customers recognize why your promotion is worth their time and money. They must be encouraged to take action and convert. You can do this by being clear about the terms of your promotion. If it's a discount, state the percentage or dollar value clearly up-front. Don't make them fish around for the most relevant information.

Sephora: The Beauty of a Good Deal

Sephora's "Beauty Offers" section states the 50% off discount in a bright pink bar across the top of the page. This also includes how long the promotion is running, which further grabs the customers' attention and piques their interest. An additional merchandising technique is showing which of the discounted items are already sold out by using an "Out of Stock" instead of an "Add" button. This builds extra value for customers, creating the image that these items are so hot, they'll be gone soon if customers don't act fast.

» Ensure your promotions stand out and drive traffic with promotional tiles

3. Create A Sense Of Urgency

When your message instills a sense of urgency and limited supply, your customers are less likely to say "Maybe later..." and more likely to say "Gotta have it!". You can create urgency through "limited time offer" or "limited stock left" sections on your e-commerce homepage.

H&M: Not Fashionably Late

H&M chose to offer free shipping on orders for a limited time. This is communicated through a banner that runs across the top of the screen, claiming "Free shipping ends tonight!" To drive home the urgency of the offer further, H&M includes a countdown timer that shows how many hours are left until the promotion expires. This is a classic e-commerce strategy to alert shoppers that the good deals won't last.

Underneath this, another, brighter banner advertises the Winter Sale that gives access to deals up to 50% off. Combined, these two banners create a visual hierarchy that packs a powerful punch to create urgency and nudge shoppers to make a purchase they otherwise may not have.

» Implement these critical visual merchandising strategies to drive sales

4. Personalize Promotions

Personalization can help you stand out from the competition and build strong relationships with customers. It also assures customers that you "get them" and have an understanding of what they're looking for when they shop.

A study from Accenture showed that a whopping 91% of respondents said they're more likely to shop with brands that personalize the shopping experience and provide recommendations accordingly. This fact is no hard-kept secret. Customers are expecting personalization—and going elsewhere when brands aren't providing it.

Netflix: Personalize Your Watchlist

Netflix runs on one of the most successful and well-known personalization engines in the world. It churns out a never-ending list of suggestions based on titles you've already watched, as well as titles that are popular in certain regions and within certain categories. It keeps people locked in for hours of viewing.

In the e-commerce world, personalization can be found from global powerhouses like Amazon to mom-and-pop shops.

» Delve deeper into how personalization can help merchandising

Maximize Your E-commerce Success the Fast Way

Effective e-commerce homepage promotions can be a game-changer if you want to attract and retain customers. When executed well, they can paint a bright, vivid picture for your customers about the opportunities and deals they have access to. By implementing these merchandising strategies and best practices, you can deliver an incredible user experience, draw your customers in, lead them to exactly what they're looking for, and keep them coming back for more.

In today's highly competitive online marketplace, can your e-commerce business afford to ignore the power of effective promotions on your homepage?