Home Page Madness - How to design the perfect starting point for your website?

All designers start designing the home page. Yet it’s actually the most challenging part of a site. It has to cover many items (see below) yet it also has to convey the company identity - what’s it all about.

Items required on the HomePage:

Search feature
Description - What you have to offer, what a visitor is expected to find on your website
Promos & Spotlights
Deals
Shortcuts for most frequent visited sections
Registration
Navigation clues (making obvious where to find whatever the user is looking for)
Teasers (so that the user even if he’s looking for that particular something can see what else you can give him)
Credibility & trust
To show the user where to start

And all that keeping in mind that everyone in the company wants a piece from the home page. It’s important real estate just above the fold and everyone including the CEO wants a big shiny link in there

Here are a couple of key elements:

What it is this place?

The visitor should answer this question at a first glance

To get this message right there are three elements that you need to have

1. The logo (of course) -it’s your identity. And it’s in the left corner always. That’s where we all look

2. The tagline under the logo that summarizes (wisely) what your business does not your motto! About 8 words

See :VendorSeek for a good tagline or NetMarket as a bad example

3. The welcome blurb. That’s a more descriptive line of your website. As always surfers are in a hurry keep it very short. And do help it with some visual element that say more than words. We do respond faster at images than we do at text

Don’t use your mission statement here “Our corporation offers high quality products and world class services bla bla” (they do bore us YES, we NEVER bother reading them). But do use strong reasons so that the users understands why he should take a look at the website

See: Twitter, HubPages, DailyCandy as examples of using the welcome blurb right
Use this elements wisely and take your space (in the upper fold) and your time with them

What do they have?

To show your product listing on the home page you don’t need the same navigation as on any other page. On products pages you need to have navigation as an additional tool (that goes left right or on top). On home page it’s different. It’s our presentation and many big website already adopt this tactic

Avoid confusing your visitors by labelling the navigation differently or putting the categories in a different order

See: Staples , Business.com,

Where do I start?

After you convince your visitor to give you a chance you have to show them where to start. You should

- Show them the search button
- Where to start if they just want to browse
- See your best stuff

See: StumbleUpon, Squidoo

But the most important thing for the home page is to convey the “big picture”. Forget about 2-3 links deep and any other seo rule (they change all the time anyway - now it’s the wiki search that’s hot) and just tell us what your business is all about! Short. We’re always in hurry on the web