What purpose should the homepage serve?
Posted in Design, User Experience
Every website has a homepage. But what should the homepage do? What purpose should it serve?
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.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Hi there could I reference some of the information from this post if I reference you with a link back to your site?
Comment by Brendan CainionJune 22nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Sure thing Brendan, thanks for asking.
Comment by Doug