Chapter 7: The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your control
Designing the Home page
Your home page needs and objectives
- Concrete
- Site identity and mission
- Site heirarchy
- Search
- Teases
- Timely content/Evidence of recent update
- Deals
- Short-cuts
- Registration
- Abstract
- Show me what I'm looking for
- ...and what I'm not looking for
- Show me where to start
- Establish credibility and trust
And you have to do it...blindfolded
- Everybody wants a piece of it (Home page is prime real estate)
- Too many cooks (Everybody has an opinion)
- One size fits all (Global Appeal)
The first casualty of war (The big picture)
- Four key questions to answer:
- What is this?
- What do they have here?
- What can I do here?
- Wy should I be here--and not somewhere else?
- The top five illegitimate excuses for not spelling out the big picture
- "We don't need to. It's obvious."
- "After people have seen the explanation once, they'll find it annoying."
- "Anybody who really needs our site will know what it is."
- "That's what our advertising is for."
- "We'll just add a first time visitor link."
How to get the message across
- The tagline
- The Welcome blurb
- Use as much space as necessary
- But don't use any more space than necessary
- Just long enough but not too long
- Limit to four key features
- Don't use a mission statement as a Welcome blurb
It's one of the most important things to test
Nothing beats a good tagline
- Good taglines...
are clear and informative
are just long enough (6 to 8 words)
convey differentiation and clear benefit
personable, lively, and sometimes clever
- only if it helps convey--not obsure--the benefit.
- Bad taglines...
- not vague
- sound generic
- not a motto
- convey value proposition
Tagline? We don't need no stinking tagline
- Tagline exceptions
- Websites that are household words
- Websites whose offline status is very well known
- CNN.com
- Smithsonian Magazine
The fifth question: "Where do I start?"
- "Here's where I want to start if I want to search."
- "Here's where I want to start if I want to browse."
- "Here's where I want to start if I want to sample their best stuff."
- Prominent start links for...
- step-by-step processes
- signing-on
- Clear labels
- "Search"
- "Browse by Category"
- "Sign in"
- "Start Here"
Home page navigation can be unique
- Unique Section Descriptions
- Different Orientations
- More space for identity
- Keep consistent
- style
- font
- categories
- color
- capitalization
The trouble with rollovers
- You have to seek them out
- You can only see one at a time
- They're twitchy (shorter helps)
- They're ineffective unless the popup appears near where you're pointing
The trouble with pulldowns
- You have to seek them out
- They're hard to scan
- They're twitchy
Rotate your stock
- one larger rotating promo is better than three small permanent ones
Why Golden Geese make such tempting targets, or "Funny, it tastes like chicken..."
- Four ways to kill the goose:
- Putting a banner on the home page if you don't have to
- Promoting everything
- Letting deals drive the homepage design
- Getting greedy for user data
