Minimal content on homepage impact
Hello I am designing a WordPress website and my client likes the idea of a minimal homepage with their logo and four simple links to each area of a very large site. (Much like Ulster Carpets) Is this bad for SEO? How can one get around having such little informative content and still feature high up on SERPs? Thank you.
It's not necessarily "bad for SEO".
Just keep in mind that SEO is secondary, specially when it comes to site's Homepage. Having hundreds of thousand organic visitors would mean nothing if they all bounce because you can't offer the information they're looking for.
Instead, focus on making the content accessible. Homepage should be like the root level of your tree and you should make second level accessible from there. Simplistic approach you mentioned does make sense to me, just make sure there is a path to every single page on the site. Otherwise, those pages are not accessible.
Most people link to a domain (homepage). SEs try to rank that page and if it works well - visitors can reach for information they're looking from your HP with low percentage of bounces or what we call pogo-sticking back to SERP, they will keep you up there in the results, because your site works well for searching visitors, no matter what content is on the HP.