Elements of a Successful Home Page
April 21, 2009 at 11:26 AM by Justin Kerr| Your website's home page is the first impression some* visitors have of your organization, so careful thought should be given to which elements will live on the home page. The more focused your home page is, the more likely a visitor will quickly understand who you are and what you do. Home pages can be broken down into three types of elements: introduction, entrance and announcement. I briefly cover what these are below, but you can find them explained in more detail in Luke Wroblewski's book, Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability. Introduction – describes your site and establishes its identity. Includes tag lines, positioning statements, images of your product or a brief explanation of your services. Entrance – provides access points to interior content and explain what's inside the site. Drop-down navigation menus, search utilities, and sampled content are good examples. Announcement – shows what's new and encourages return visits. These can include blogs, news items, event listings, advertisements or other call-to-action items.  Two great articles on home page design: Home Sweet Homepage (thinkvitamin.com) Home Page Goals (alistapart.com) *The reason I state "some" visitors will access your home page first is because sites that have structured their content with a high degree of search engine optimization (SEO) will have as many (or more) initial hits on their interior pages as they do on their home page. |
Tags: seo content usability
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