Writing the perfect homepage?

Developing a new site any opinions on the perfect homepage

[bullneedsapic]

Afternoon,

Starting to put my content together and would be delighted to get everyones input on the perfect homepage..In regards to keywords%, layout, Pictures, etc. It's health related and wanted everyones take..I have great content, but Im in business to sell products.

Thanks

Mark

[beekiller]

I started as a graphic designer, and am now deeply involved in optimization. However, the one feature I've found to be the most compelling on any site is an image of the human face. There have been several studies that prove this point, but when users navigate to your site, their eyes will immediately be drawn to the eyes of another human face.

That would be my reccommendation to you. Try to incorporate an image of a face on your home page.

[tedster]

I think a home page needs to answer two questions, at a glance:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?

The first is essential, and often fudged a bit too much. New arrivals want to know if they clicked on what they thought they did, and if they came to the kind of place they were looking for. So the Home Page needs to be a friendly signpost and a welcome mat.

The second point is the invitation to explore. The issue of information architecture is essential -- you want your copy and navigation labels to tell the site's story, but to tell it very efficiently.

A home page is not the spot to get expansive - it's a place to say "This website will be easy for you to deal with. Nothing overwhelming or confusing is hiding if you click. Here's what we have for you, in a nutshell." So I prefer economical text, with inline links to the most commonly desired internal pages.

Even though the page needs to be your welcome mat, it's also not the place to explicitly say "welcome to widget world" or "we are the number one provider of widgets and gidgets in the tri-state area". No one cares -- get down to business for your users, and you will retain a greater share of traffic and see fewer "one hit wonders" in your server logs. The welcome can be implied by your thoughtfulness, and the blowing of your own horn can be tucked away in the "about" section on a small utility menu, in most cases.

In the past there was a trend for creating "splash" pages - and you really didn't see what was up with the site until you clicked in. I've never seen this approach give results for our clients that weren't immediately improved by removing the splash page and, instead, immediately introducing the look and feel of the internal pages.

A new visitor gets a quick orientation the minute they arrive and then that job is done. On their second click they can be focused on the content, the information, rather than learning the mechanics of the interface -- you already gave them that on the home page.

Jakob Nielsen has published a powerful and beautifully usable book called "Home Page Usability - 50 Home Pages Deconstructed". I've studied that beauty more than almost any other resource I have on my shelves. It gets a big recommendation from me.

[bullneedsapic]

Great post guys. Anyone have a great page that they want to sticky mail me to show is a open invite by me...

Thanks,

Mark

[bts111]

tedster, I also have that beauty and believe it's the best book that I have ever bought. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to make a killing on the internet ;)

[merlincorp]

Anybody have the ISBN number for Jakob Nielsen's book that's referred to above? Can't find it on Amazon.

Cheers
Adrian

[merlincorp]

FOUND IT ... listed on amazon.com.

Have bought a used one from UK supplier.

Thanks for the tip!

Adrian

[Leosghost]

Interestingly enough this thread is now the only place where you get a result for that book title "in quotes" in "G"...

Nice post tedster...simply put ..

Now i just got to convince someone here today who wants their homepage to look like a japanese red light at 10.00pm district on speed..

[ronburk]

IMO, a home page for a site that serves customers has to do two things:

a) tell the new visitor at a glance whether or not he's likely found what he's looking for and

b) route the return visitor as quickly and easily as possible to the page devoted completely to the task he came there to perform.

An informational website is something else, but when the website is for a company that sells something to actual customers (e.g., not an affiliate), then there's no substitute for task-driven design. Write down all the tasks people come there to perform. Prioritize them. Then do walkthroughs of each task. You'll find mistakes like: the most important task has been given the least amount of screen real estate on the home page, there's no visible way to accomplish a given task from the home page, etc.

Worry about the colors and pretty images later (much later), after you can show that the website makes it easy to actually accomplish what the visitors came there to do.

[mike schmitz]

Jakob Nielsen is like so 1999. He talks in vague terms about important things such as clutter, colors and navigation but he is horrible about monetization. It's like he thinks every website was created for our personal amusement. Perhaps one of his last 20 volumes covers monetization, but his well known book poked fun at a lot of websites, but never offed a solution - just complaints.

The point - skip his books if your website has any goal of making money.

[grandpa]

The perfect home page? To me that assumes that once it is 'perfected' there would be no reason to re-visit the page. I tend to believe the perfect home page (or any other page) is an evolving process, a work in progress, that may never be completed.

Regarding Jakob Nielsen and others, they offer sound, practical advice developed from years of study. While something may not specifically address your issue(s) today, it could in the future. If you do a search for the first part of the previously mentioned book title, look thru the top 10 results. There are some real gems there! And many of them will lead the reader deeper and deeper into what makes a good page, so be prepared to spend (at a minimum) a few hours researching and hopefully learning.

I can tell from my logs that a few people don't like my home page. Those are the 1 hit wonders. I wonder why they left? Could it be the color scheme, or that it didn't render properly in their browser (I hope not - I test for that), or maybe there's too much information and they couldn't find what they were looking for. Who really knows, without asking the visitor. But I know that I get a lot of business from that page, and a lot of repeat business. So it can't be too bad, and I don't change much about it. If it were perfect should I assume a conversion from every visitor?

<add>Just checked the wayback machine.. my home page has pretty much looked the same since 1999</add>

[arran]

Jakob Nielsen has published a powerful and beautifully usable book called "Home Page usability - 50 Home Pages Deconstructed". I've studied that beauty more than almost any other resource I have on my shelves. It gets a big recommendation from me.

tedster/bts - thanks for the recommendation. Mine arrived this morning.

Can't wait to get stuck in...

arran.

[Precious pearls]

hello friends,
Home page content has quite good weightage in optimization.
You should use headings in your contents. It should contain
most of the keywords relevnt to your web-site.
The Keywords used in the content should be bold and
italicized.
Data of the content should be directly related to the
web-site. Text in the content should be error free and
readable. Content should not be written like it seems that
you have put the data out of the blue.
If you follow these guidelines surely you will be benefited
and satisfied.

Precious_Pearls

[createErrorMsg]

he is horrible about monetization

That's because he's a usability expert. Usability is a user centered discipline (hence the name). It's about making a site best for the visitor.

Monetization has nothing to do with your users ability to navigate, find information, or experience your site. In fact, in many cases, monetization puts a serious dent in usability (clutter lowers usability significantly, and much advertising is just that...clutter).

The fact is that usability as JN talks about it actually DOES have to do with monetization, only in an indirect way. A more usable site attracts and keeps visitors. More importantly, good IA and usability on a site allows far greater control over where your visitors go. They are, in fact, the ONLY ways to influence user movement through your site.

If that doesn't put you in the monetization driver's seat, nothing will.

cEM

[Precious pearls]

Hello Mark,

As you are going to develop a new site so it will be better that you follow all the basic guidelines of site development like keyword density, the page should be well structured site should be easy to navigate.
If any other suggestions are required dont hesitate. All queries of yours should be solved before the completion of your site.

Cheers
P_P