Call to Action
What you want to visitors to do is a "call-to-action".
In design this should be your primary objective, not an afterthought (as it frequently is).
Since search visitors land on multiple pages, it's generally essential that your call-to-action is site-wide.
Typically, these will be direct ('buy' or 'contact') or indirect ('subscribe', 'follow' or 'connect').
There usually needs to be an incentive to act - few people give contact details, they trade them (examples are e-books, white papers).
Principles
- Your content should be the minimum needed to get an action.
- Guide visitors to act: It should be implicit what you want visitors to do.
- If you offer too many choices, they may do nothing.
- Make it easy and painless for them to act.
- Consider incentives to "act now" such as ebooks and discounts.
- Make the Call to Action ubiquitous, not just on the Home page.
- Test and refine. Test and refine. Repeat until you have optimised.