We live in a world where first impressions are made in a matter of a
seconds. Our lives are completely saturated with media and our response
to this information overload is to 'thin- slice'
the information to sift through it quickly - we're relying on an almost
sub-conscious decision making process because we don't have the time to
weigh up all the facts and figures.
Don't believe me? Think about your email inbox, you'll glance at the
subject lines for only tenths of a second before binning it and those
emails never get given the benefit of the doubt. What about scanning
your news aggregators, RSS feeds and even somebody elses blog, how much
does it take to make you consciously click-through or even just scroll
past the first fold?
That's right! You might've spent a huge deal of effort on your website
content and probably lots of money to have it beautifully designed but
the attention you pay to your news aggregators is exactly how much
attention you're getting from your first time visitors.
Your website is competing with everybody else's website for a smaller and
smaller slice of your visitors time to make an impression. And if that
first impression doesn't engage you've lost that visitor forever.
Despite your teachers indoctrinating you in elementary school with the
old saying 'Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover' it's what we find
ourselves doing more and more...
Ok, enough of my doom and gloom, I'm not saying we should give up
designing websites. There's hope - with a combination of good design
and useful content you can make sure that your home page has the best
chance of not bouncing visitors by following my 5 small business
homepage design guidelines. (By bouncing I mean they're leaving your
site right away)
1) Your homepage needs to add value. Immediately.
The homepage is not a company information page. I see a lot of small
business websites making this mistake. As a visitor I need to be struck
with how you are going to add value to my life.
A spiel about how long your company has been around for, how many
employees it has, its mission statement - these are all meant to be
locked safely away in the 'About' page that I'll click on later when I
want to, after I've seen everything else.
Your website isn't 1990s brochure-ware, it should be a 2008 interactive
portal or close to it. I want to see your products in action, I want to
know how they can help me, I want to see a portfolio of your work, I
want to see what others have said about you, I want to see what you can
do for me - not necessarily all at once but you should have 1 or 2 of
those elements on your home page.
2) Keep your homepage really simple, here's an example.
See how Apple does it on the first fold of their front page. Ok, so you
don't have the marketing budget or Apple's famed reputation but the
point is you'll confuse the visitor if you stuff too much content on
your homepage. As with presentations, simple is beautiful, your
homepage is a presentation of your business.
Some web designers seem to think the way to get around homepage
bouncing is to put the whole site on the homepage with a mashup of
multiple special offers, product information, company profile, multiple
advertisement banners - one at a time they might be good, but jumbled
altogether it's a case of the whole being less than the sum of its
parts!
Ask yourself, what is it about your products or services that you want
to draw the visitors attention to first and *focus* on that on your
homepage.
3) Sparingly use obvious calls to action.
So you want people to click past the homepage? You're allowed to use
some calls to action (not too many otherwise you break rule #2)
including but not limited to a limited offer banner advertisement, a
free trial button or a "find out more" link for your visitor after
they've digested the correct sized portion of interesting content on
your homepage.
4) Make sure the site navigation is available and obvious
This ties back to having obvious calls to action. A lot of sites have
fancy flash homepages or homepages that are graphics heavy which are
hard to navigate (where the hell do I click to move on?). My
recommendation is to make your horizontal tab site menu available even
on your homepage. This is the current site design trend and it's one
you should follow because everybody who surfs the net understands this
navigation protocol.
5) Regularly Update Your Home Page
And make sure your visitors can see it's being regularly updated.
They'll return if they know there's some fresh interesting content to
gobble up the next time they come giving you a bigger chance of getting
them past that home page cos they'll be prepped. Maybe you might have
some interesting announcements to make like new products, or
improvements to your service, price changes - make sure the world can
see this!
I hope you're still following, I'm not saying that you have to follow
these 5 commandments but you should use them as guidelines for your
homepage akin a home page design charter.
Here's some concrete suggestions and examples for how you might design a home page that follows the guidelines...
-
Put a blog on the home page to make it the focus of your site
-
Put a big video on the 1st fold
-
Have a big picture of your flagship product on sale accompanied by its main selling points
-
Portfolio of Your Work - a concisely written paragraph and a small
image for each of your top 4 or 5 projects you've done in the past
-
Announcements and news and links to Photo Galleries - Turn your home
page into a live feed of what's happening at your company.
I'm sure there's plenty more that have come to your mind now that I've
got you in the mood. The point to take away is that your homepage is
the foyer to your online business. You need to keep it clean, simple
and inviting because your visitors are going to judge your book by its
cover, don't assume otherwise.
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