Get homepage design right first time

A website’s homepage is the most important page because for most users this is where they will enter and form their first impressions about your organisation. Increasingly, people are using websites to find out more about an organisation before doing business with them, online or off-line, and the homepage is your face to the world and opportunity to capture their interest. Outlined below are five simple tasks that every homepage should meet in order to function effectively.

1. Define who you are. Within the first few seconds of a homepage loading it should be obvious to a visitor what the website does and who is behind it. The simplest way to do this is by having a strap line within the title bar of a site (see www.discoverydrilling.co.uk or www.chaletkiana.com for examples). If design constraints mean that it is not possible to do this then the introductory text is the second best place to include this information, however it doesn’t stand out as well here and users are less likely to see it straight away. Having this information obviously located communicates to users whether or not they have found the correct website and should clarify instantly what your organisation does.

2. Navigation – make it easy for users to find what they want. After telling people who you are, the navigation on a homepage is the second most important consideration. Break it down into categories under which content will be indexed: use no more than seven main headings, keep them logically structured in a way that represents what you do. Doing this not only allows users to find for themselves what they are looking for, but also gives you a certain amount of control over how you direct people within the site. Although a fairly obvious point, it is important to locate the navigation system in a clear place so that it can be found and used easily.

3. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. Fortunately the days when websites were littered with flashing animations and outrageous colours are gone. However, there are still too many sites that blind the user with over complicated graphics and colours, so much that users get screen blindness and are unable to find items important to them. Animation can be used effectively to communicate what it is your company does (see www.achievement.uk.com), but unless it is critical to sell your site on its creative talents, avoid using too much animation, as it should only be used to illustrate real content and not just to garnish your design. One very important result of following this guideline is that it will keep the size of your homepage down so that it doesn’t take forever to download on slower connections. If you fail to have a fast homepage it’s likely that people will not bother to hang around to find out more.

4. Domain name – make it memorable. It can’t be laboured too much that doing business over the internet is extremely similar to doing it any other way and many of the same principles apply. If you don’t have a domain name that people will remember or can associate with your company, then it is much less likely that they will find you on the internet. It’s also important that you purchase the correct name for your type of organisation and geographic location. For example, companies based in the UK should have .co.uk names and charities or not for profit organisations .org.uk. If available, it’s a good idea to also purchase the equivalent .com and .org domain names – see www.rawconsulting.co.uk and www.rawconsulting.com for an example.

5. Branding – keep it consistent. Your online branding should be indistinguishable from your existing image - logos, slogans etc. should be reflected by both. Successfully demonstrating that you are the same company reassures users that they are dealing with something they already associate certain values with. If you fail to do this, you are in danger of misleading users into believing that they have found a new organisation and they will be more wary about any dealings with companies they have no prior knowledge of.