The Home Page - Two Philosophies

[tedster]

When creating a Home Page, there seem to be two approaches that differ considerably. This philosophical question has become quite the internal debate for one of my clients, and any input will be a help in clarifying things. I appreciate the great breadth of experience that this community represents.

A. Top Level Content
This kind of Home Page has navigation that helps you explore the website, but the main content area has something substantial to offer on its own - an explanation of why the site or the company exists, perhaps some editorial comment, and so on. Most blogs fall into this category, although the features of the Home Page change rapidly. Other sites using this philosophy offer more stable copy on the Home Page.

B. Portal Style Links
This kind of Home Page offers a collection of "traffic driver" snippets to the internal pages, with little or no dedicated content on the page itself. Yahoo is a major example, but there are certainly many more. This approach seems to be a favorite with many e-commerce sites.

I'd like to collect some opinions on the differences - and ask some questions.

1) Does the stability of Approach A offer any advantages in Search Engines?

2) Is Approach A more important for a relatively unknown website - does it become less important as familiarity grows?

3) Does Approach B create a ranking yo-yo as the Home Page features change? Especially for sites with lower link popularity?

4) Does featuring products without much copy improve sales?

5) Is it reasonable to construct a hybrid of the two? If so, should the more extensive content go above or below the fold?

6) Do any other differentiating factors come to mind?

[Quadrille]

Having some stable content on the front page doubtless helps in SEO; but having an unchanging front page dissuades repeat visitors (arguably), and doesn't do much to sell anything.

Some or all of the static info could usefully and logically be placed on an 'about' page.

Having a history of the site - or of you! - is the kiss of death; think about what the site is for, what a visitor is there for, and try to meet that need - you won;'t go far wrong. Telling a first time visitor that you added a forum in 2003 and a blog in 2005 really doesn't help anyone.

But there's no 'rule', and a lot depends on your niche, how ofte the site is updated, and how big the site is.

Again, there's no 'one answer' on how much copy there should be for a product; are your visitors liely to know what they want, or will some detail help them?

So long as the product section / page has full details, then SEO and many customers will be satisfied.

As for hybrid - there is every conceivable combination of the different styles; go study your rivals (learn from their mistakes as well as their good ideas!). But always have a clear idea of your target audience, and meet their expectations.

[iamlost]

I have been playing with 'home' options for some months now.

Once sites grow past a certain point the site architecture becomes restrictive: river flows rather than ocean currents. This is commonly treated by adding sitemap or search ability. Or the jam packed discount-r-us portal look.

What I did initially was track click paths. What this showed was a substantive number of visitors cutting across existing navigational structure. Taking the most popular of these 'diversions' I built what I initially labelled 'subHome' pages and presented as alternative 'interest groupings'.

To use a WebmasterWorld-clone top level fora example:
* Home -> Forums Index -> Browser, WebMaster, Yahoo, Marketing, Advertising, Google, SEs, Local * is the site foundation. And each category has multiple subsequent fora.

But, example: click track analysis shows frequent tracks 'short-circuiting" across channels: HTML and CSS (Browser), Ecommerce and CMS (WebMaster), LinkDev (Marketing), AdSense (Google). I therefore create a subHome page that presents them repackaged together.

The initial purpose was to attract and hold targeted Social Media traffic. It worked extremely well and has become a general 'feature'. The results were (and are) a dramatic uptake of these subHome pages as bookmarked-favourites landing pages. As they were refined and multiplied they have became, in effect, 'group defined semi-personalised site Home pages'.

It would be fun to continue logically to a scripted 'build your own individual mysite landing page' but as my sites tend to evergreen niche content not changing general info I have decided to remain with 'group-limited' personalisation. Much less maintenance.

To answer your question(s) directly:
* I still retain the traditional 'Home Page' as per A: Top Level Content.
* I have added multiple B: Traffic Driver "Cross-Ctegory" SubHome Landing Page snippets.

1) I do not believe SEs care whether there is a dedicated 'Home Page". I like to have a start page to anchor the admin pages and as signage for the 4% of people who enter the site via DomainName. Also nice to have that 'Home' link go somewhere.

2) Depends on the backlinks targets. Might actually get more diverse linking without...

3) As an addition rather than replacement it enhances SERP exposure. If it were solely a replacement the yo-yo effect can vary on the frequency and volume of change: definitely a concern to be considered and addressed.

4) maybe. depends. :)

5) Never tried. As detailed above I prefer a complimentary rather than one-page-hybrid approach.

6) Build for visitor retention and conversion. Then consider SEs, Social Media Sites, and other traffic generators.

[tedster]

click track analysis shows frequent tracks 'short-circuiting" across channels... I therefore create a subHome page that presents them repackaged together.

Thanks for that brilliant idea - very powerful, especially when various vested parties within the organization are each fighting for Home Page real estate.