The homepage sets the tone.

Every user is unique, so is every website. With every website comes a new experience. And with each experience comes a new learning curve.

Each time a user comes to your website they are taking the time out of their busy life to get to know you. If it’s the first time they have come to your website, they will have to learn how to navigate you site and how to find the content they are looking for.

One of the primary purposes of the homepage is to set the tone for how the rest of the website should look and flow.

Once the user has determined the placement and style of the navigation on the homepage, it shouldn’t change as they progress through the website. For example, if the navigation bar on the homepage is located across the header of the website and has five main categories, it shouldn’t move to the left side of the website and have seven main categories (this also applies to link colors, buttons, and the location of elements such as the login or search bar). This type of inconsistent navigation may make sense when you are designing the website but consider the user first, and strongly consider their attention span.

Take the analogy of driving a car, you don’t want to learn how to drive it the first time only to find out half way down the road you have to learn how to drive the car all over again.