Value of designing better suited Home page

Your home page is your internet home. It is the biggest asset and the 1^st impression of your website to show off the visitors. Does anybody disagree! It is the page which appears when any internet savvy type your root URL in the web browser; and where visitors reach by default, also called as front page, web server directory index, index.html, home.html etc. Homepage is your company's face to the world. It’s a place where potential customers first visited before doing any business with you. So ‘your facial depiction’ should better communicate with the users without any complexity or confusion. It should be as welcoming as possible. It should be interesting and appealing to all kind of users. I have studied some 250 randomly selected home pages of the websites and found that on an average home page consists of the following segments as shown in the pie chart below:-

• Operating system and browser overhead: 20%
• Navigations : 22%
• Concise content & site features: 20%
• Advertisements: 3%
• Self-promotions comments about the site or respective company: 11%
• Welcome, logo, tagline, search box etc : 5%
• Fillers (Useless art, graphics and smiling models): 7 %
• Unused space: 12%

These are the few simple points that you should remember when developing content for the website home page -

First Impression counts: You must bear in mind about what you are designing and the likes of potential visitors. Use the dynamic or light flash introductions and background graphics accordingly. As the content rich sites tend to have busier home pages, means you ‘ll have to let visitors go directly to whatever they likes by providing several deep links from the front page. Similarly the home pages for most of the entertainment websites have all the rich graphics and breathtaking use of flash and animation. Home page must give a substantial glimpse of your site that what it is all about.

Concise content with headline: Your home page content must create a positive impact on the visitors more effectively. Have a great headline to grabs the visitors attention and to make them stay longer. In business sites headlines should be focused on the USP. Page should be started with a tagline that summarizes what the site is all about. Avoid writing long descriptions as online visitors don’t have that much inclination to go through it all. So be crisp and concise w.r.t. your presentation.

Linked effectively: As your home page is the no.1 entry point into your site so it should be well linked to from outside pages. Search engine always gives a relevancy boost to the home page of your site so the navigation structure of your site includes hypertext links to all major subpages right from the home page.

Use splash accordingly: Flash can be used to give a dynamic and high impact introduction to your site. But 1stly heavy flashy content on the home page often increase the time it takes to view a web page means its just a matter of one click when visitors leaves your site in dust and moves to surf cyberspace. That’s why the index page holding the flash file tags must be expertly optimized. Images and graphics are the powerful mode of communication when they show items of interest to users, but will backfire if they show mere extravaganza or irrelevant depictions. Therefore use graphics not just to decorate your homepage but to show real content.

Keep it new and fresh: The web world is evolving constantly. Every here and there new concepts and modifications become the part of the business. So make sure that that your website should reflect accordingly. always keep the content of your home page fresh and up to date. New arrivals (products) should have their own place and special ones should be given top most priority on the home page. Concisely your home page be the most frequently changed/updated page on your site.

Show your credentials on the home page: Your Site’s credibility is also one of the factor which decides it’s usability among visitors as business on the Internet is a matter of trust. Show your merit badges right up front so that the visitors feel more secure about you and your business.

Finally include search box: You should better help users find what they need. Search is an important segment of any professional website. Make sure that your search box should be at least 25-30 characters wide, so it can search multiple words query without obscuring parts of the keywords entered.

Home page is the one page that all your visitors will view and is the blueprint for the success of your website. All web sites are organized around a home page that acts as a logical point of entry into the system of web pages. An improper home page can seriously jeopardize your website objectives. So it must be designed and updated frequently with utmost care.