When conversions are flat, the homepage becomes the obvious suspect. It is the most visited page. It represents the company. If something is wrong with how visitors perceive you, surely it starts there.
So the homepage gets redesigned. New hero. Tighter copy. Better visuals. The team ships it, watches the metrics, and waits.
Nothing changes.
Where the homepage sits in the journey
Most visitors who reach your homepage have already decided to investigate. They clicked a link, typed your name, or followed a referral. They are not cold. They are already curious.
The homepage's job is to orient them — to confirm they are in the right place and help them find what they came for. It is a routing surface, not a conversion surface.
If visitors are bouncing from your homepage, the question is not "what's wrong with the homepage?" The question is "what happened before they got here that we failed to continue?"
Where the leak usually is
The conversion failure is rarely at the homepage. It is usually one of two places:
Upstream: The landing page where traffic actually arrives. Most paid, organic, or referral traffic does not land on your homepage. It lands on a specific page — a product page, a campaign landing page, a blog post. That is where the first impression happens. That is where the question either gets answered or ignored.
Downstream: The page where the ask happens. Pricing, signup, demo request. If the visitor made it past the homepage and still did not convert, the breakdown is later in the sequence — not earlier.
Why the homepage gets blamed anyway
The homepage is visible. It is the page founders look at most. It is the page that gets shared in investor decks and partnership conversations. When something feels off, it is the easiest target.
But visibility is not causality. The homepage is where attention goes. It is not necessarily where attention leaks.
What to look at instead
Before redesigning the homepage, trace the actual path visitors take. Where do they enter? Where do they exit? Which page is the last one they see before leaving?
The homepage might be fine. The leak might be somewhere you are not looking.