The Home Page: Three Tips for Success

Over the last decade, Web designers and Internet consultants have preached that the most vital page on a website is the home page.  It was once thought that users will land on the home page, and from there, they will pilot their way to information.  This may have been true ten years ago, but not today.

Modern search engines have become quite savvy at locating relevant pages within a site.  Users are beginning to land on websites through a deeper, more applicable page related to their search; thus, the home page now falls short of its navigational duty.

However, the home page still remains an informational surrogate for most websites, so it should not be ignored.

Here are three home page tips you should consider when striving for maximum home page usage.

Home Page Goals
To first understand the home page, you must recognize the purpose of the page: to attract, to allure, and to entice a visitor to explore a site.  If landing on a home page, a visitor will be searching for a product or service, or information related to the site.  Remembering this, it is important to provide relevant information on the home page and in the navigation tabs.  Online marketing expert Nick Usborne compares a visitor’s relationship with the home page to a blind date.  People meet and get to know one another slowly on a blind date, just as when landing on a home page.

Visitor Questions When Viewing a Home Page
Seventy-five percent of Web users associate the design of a website with the credibility of the organization.  Sixty-eight percent of American online shoppers say they will distrust a website that does not have a professional appearance.  And because the home page can be, and often times is, the first page a user lands on, it’s extremely important to display a design with a subtle elegance.  Here are some questions to think about when thinking about the home page design:  Is this site credible?  Can I trust this site?  What does this company do?  How do I learn more?

User Procedures
The best way to think about what a visitor wants on a home page is to become the visitor.  Consider how you react when landing on a page and become aware of your conscious, and even your subconscious, mental processes.  Consider this rule of thumb: Reaction, Relevance, and Ready-to-go. A user tends to react to a home page quickly.  He or she makes subconscious judgments about the images and color scheme.  Next, a user considers whether the site is relevant.  He or she will ask, “Does this site have what I want?”  If the user is satisfied, he or she will be ready-to-go to the next page.  This means that navigation tabs should contain appropriate keywords and those tabs should direct a user to the pages he or she desires.