Goals: sell online & offline products, sell user’s content & items, sign up new users, extend website’s reach

Audience: consumers, sellers, writers, businesses, developers and advertisers

Clear, consistent navigation.

The header of the homepage features the logo that doubles as a home button, a left hand navigation bar, an expanding search bar, a shopping cart button and a login for returning users. All of the elements remain consistent throughout the rest of the site, even the left hand navigation bar which condenses into a drop down on subpages to allow for underlying content to fill the full width of the page.

User specific content.

It’s true, Amazon knows what you like. At the top of the homepage it prompts you to create an account to receive “personalized recommendations”. It remembers what items you have searched for before (even if you haven’t logged in) and displays relevant and even alternative items.

Lots of content, many ways to search.

Content is king, at least on this site it is. Just in case you didn’t know how to navigate the site, they have you covered. You can list out every category of products with one click, browse every category from the homepage and search in any category or sub-category of products. Pay attention to the drop down menu to the left of the ultra-wide search box, it lists all the product categories alphabetically whereas the menu bar to the left lists all the categories by popularity.

Expandable design.

I am usually not a fan of websites that expand to fill the width the browser, mostly because it looks bad and rarely serves purpose beyond filling the screen. However, in the case of Amazon, they do a pretty good job of implementing an expandable design. The center column houses several rows of products based on the users browsing history that display anywhere from 3 to 7 (or more) products depending on the width of their browser. The only thing that doesn’t expand is the top row that houses an advertisement (currently displaying the Kindle 2), it simply center aligns and leaves an awkward white space to the left and right of it.

Ads in a Box.

Let’s face it, the whole site is an advertisement, even the content is well… selling content. But what they have done, is place all of the “real ads” in boxes on the right hand side, this not only breaks up the site a little, but it lends creditability to the “content” in the middle which is more specific to the user.

Conclusion: Although Amazon’s homepage is not the most creative one ever, it is extremely relevant and engaging. It is also extremely easy to navigate and takes into consideration multiple different user browsing habits. All in all, Amazon does an exceptional job of engaging and converting their users, and their revenue is proof of that.

What is a conversion you ask? A conversion happens when a user on your site takes an action that you intended. If you have an eCommerce site, and a visitor makes a purchase on your site, that’s a conversion.

Light vs Heavy

Now that we know what a conversion is, let’s talk about Heavy Conversions and Light Conversions.

A Heavy Conversion is an action that takes a lot from the user, such as a purchase, filling out a contact form, or becoming a member of your site. Typically, a Heavy Conversion requires the user to give something up, such as money.

A Light Conversion, in contrast, is one that requires very little from the user. Some examples of Light Conversions might be the time spent on the site or requesting a whitepaper.

Let’s face it, we all love the Heavy Conversions, but we need to remember the Light Conversions as well. If you pay attention to the Light Conversions, you can change your tactics and increase the amount of Heavy Conversions you get from your website.

The 3:1 Rule

As a rule of thumb, you should always have at least 3 Light Conversions for every 1 Heavy Conversion. The Light Conversions must back up or contradict the Heavy Conversion as well.

A Light Conversion that backs up the Heavy Conversion will show users are aware of your Heavy Conversion, but they need some more convincing. Whereas a Light Conversion that contradicts the Heavy Conversion will tell you that users are not aware or completely uninterested in what your Heavy Conversion is offering.

The homepage is a lot like the cover of a book. It needs to quickly convey to the user what the purpose of the website is, much like a book cover must convey what genre of book is. It also has to convince the user to spend more time reading and exploring its content.

The homepage must inspire the user to go deeper into the site, just like a book cover must convince the browser to read through its contents.

Let’s get down to it, below is a checklist of items that you should strongly consider when reviewing your homepage. I have put them in order of importance. Keep in mind, based on the goals for your website one or more of these may not be applicable for you.

1. Does it inspire the user to go further?

2. Does it empower the user to quickly navigate the site?

3. Is it clear to the user what you do?

4. Is the navigation established here or does it change? See article.

5. How easy is it to get to your contact information? Products? Services?

6. Does it show the latest and greatest things happening at your company?

That’s it for now. Feel free to leave comments and suggest more points for the list.

Why is simple better for our clients? Because our clients hire us to build them a website that does something. That something could be a user purchasing a t-shirt or joining a mailing list. It could also be a user simply finding out more information about our client.

A simple navigational structure is easy to navigate. A simple cms is easy to update. Most importantly, a simple website doesn’t get in the user’s way.

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.

Any designer worth his salt will consider how effectively the design will be able to be Search Engine Optimized. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the likelihood that search engines, like Google, and those using search engines will be able to find your website when searching for targeted keywords. Let’s call it marketing for your website. After all, your website IS meant to be part of your marketing strategy. It’s no good to have the most glorious website in the industry if no one is able to find it through search engines. And unless you are an industry leader or you do not care about organic results, you NEED people to find your website through search engines.

As an example, Flash animation is a great way to add some “pizzazz” to your site, but at what expense? Yes, Flash can still be used in a SEO friendly manner and Google will index it if programmed correctly. But a site programmed completely in Flash is going to be more difficult to increase the rank of than a site that has HTML content for search engines to find. Your site will look great and you will receive compliments from the 3 people a month that are able to find it. Is that really what you want? Again, if everyone knows you, feel free to Flash it up, they’re coming anyway. But, if you are begging to be found, use Flash in moderation.

So before you start your next web project, make sure you ask the developer how they intend to take your message to the masses. The internet has enabled marketers to advertise their goods and services in more targeted ways than ever before. You do not really need to search for new customers. Build it right and they will come. Build it wrong, and you’ll be awfully lonely playing with all those neat Flash features.

Oh and by the way, the photo really has no relevance to this post, I just thought it looked cool.

Now is a great time to shift some of your company’s advertising budget from print, TV and radio to online mediums. Regardless of the fact that online advertising is typically less expensive than other forms, it is also easily targeted to the market you choose, can be used to interact with your potential customers, allows in depth analysis of consumer behavior and trends, and promotes quick reaction to changes in this behavior. You only have to pay for the advertising that people see and you can make sure that only people that care about your product category are seeing your ad. When they do see your ad you have the opportunity to engage them in ways that are not possible with the other forms. In two clicks you can sell them your product or teach them more about your service.

You may see your competitors cutting back on their advertising and wonder if you should do the same. The “save for a rainy day” mentality will most likely help your company come out of these times unscathed, but is that really good enough? It’s time to realize that it’s raining today and it’s time to go out and buy an umbrella. Basic supply and demand comes in to play: if everyone is staying inside, no one is buying umbrellas and they’re cheap. You’ll find that you may be able to buy ad space on a site or publication you couldn’t afford before. Expand your marketing efforts while others cut back and enjoy a greater percentage of the medium and hopefully an increase in market share.

Although fuel prices are on the way back down to reasonable levels it’s safe to assume that more people will look to the internet for their Christmas shopping to save a few dollars on fuel than in years past. Even if the economy shapes up soon and gas prices fall back to $1.05/gallon you can expect that the percentage of shopping being done online will continue to increase. Whether purchasing a new pair of shoes or gathering the initial information for buying a home, there is an ever increasing number of people using the internet to make purchases and to guide their buying decisions. So why not focus your advertising dollars to a medium that reaches these millions of shoppers where they are spending their time? They’re already looking for your product/service anyway. Why not help them find it?

Pick up a copy of the November issue of Practical Web Design (or .net if you are in the UK) and turn to page 90. Thanks to Practical Web Design for asking us to be a part of their mag!

For the Mac fonts I have included acceptable substitutes as well. The fonts are listed below in order of the most common to both operating systems to less common based on a variety of sources.