Ideas for a cozy home page
The way is designed the home page encourages visitors to stay on the site or leave it, and give an impression that will influence its decision on the content, regardless of its quality.
The statistical tool of your hosting can optionally specify the bounce rate of visitors to the home page, ie, those who do not consult any other page.
Since the homepage is not intended to respond to a question, but is used for orientation, the bounce rate should approach zero (which is not true of the inside pages because user leave the site when they found what they search).
The more the bounce rate exceeds zero and the more it shows dissatisfaction.
What to do
- Explains the goal
The visitor must, and it is the role of the home page, find out what deals the site. This can be stated explicitly or implicitly by objects that are presented.
It must have an idea of what he can find or do on the site. Examples can show that. - A balanced layout
This applies to all pages, but more particularly to the Homepage. Avoid empty areas, calculate the distribution of space according to the relative importance of the elements. Avoid the disproportion between the components. - Top of the hierarchy
The home pages does not give direct access to all content of the site, but to categories that themselves provide access to all articles concerning them.
Ideally, the best pages, those with the most audience, are accessible from the home page, others in more specialized pages. - The image of a human face
Sometimes, seeing a face captures the visitor's attention and encourages him to continue the visit.
But it depends on the topic of the site. If the face does not please the visitor, he will leave the site without objective reason. This works well on a travel website or any activity related to human relations and not on a technical site.
A photo of a sexy girl can please the visitor as it can irritate. Advertisements using this artifice are not directed at a mature or female audience ...
Gathering information on making a home page is easy. Not only on the Web, but also looking at any magazine The summary is what the client looks on the shelves of the library before deciding to buy, so it is treated by publisher as an incentive to continue reading.
In the case of a blog, home page is at the same time an internal page, the design guidelines no longer apply to the body of the page, but applies on the side panel or a part of the page.
What to avoid
- Splash screen
This involves placing a picture or a frame on which to click to start the visit.
It was very common at a time and still retain the practice of some sites, is worthless for the user experience or search engine. - List of contents
To list everything on the site, on the home can be daunting and is not incentive. When there is too much information, it is ignored in block.
Just a few well-chosen examples incitate the visitor to continue the tour. This will be the role of internal links to, from step to step, link all the content. - Commercial presentation
The words used to praise the site occupy a space that will be better used otherwise. Visitors are not interested to know that your site is the first or the best (supposedly). It's something that might interest when choosing sites to visit, but since it is already there, this is no longer relevant. What is useful is to say precisely what he can found there instead. - Popups
This applies to all pages, but even more to the home page. If the visitor is immediately annoyed by something so embarrassing that a window that pops up to hide the contents of the page, what chance is there that he remains on the site? And provide backlinks if webmaster?
To conclude, the advice is not worth the experience. It is by reviewing lots of sites, and as I said before by looking magazines, and noting what you likes and what bothers you or makes you go, that you can know how to improve your own site.
See also
- Design of a Web page
This article relates to the internal pages. - How to write for the Web
The presentation of the text.