Home Page Importance
In the cyber world, there are two things that can occur. One is
to become lost because we don’t understand the language used and
two is to become so immersed in the language we forget others
don’t speak it.
In my travels, I have had to learn most of this the hard way.
There are numerous sites available to anyone seeking to learn
many things about web design, marketing and the like but much of
the information is like reading a foreign language. I have tried
to speak in plain language and when using a common use term,
tried to define it for you. I hope I have been somewhat
successful in that attempt.
A “landing page” can be described as that page within your
website that an Internet user ends up while conducting a search.
Many of us, myself included once, believed that everyone came in
the front door through our home page. This is not true. Because
of the construction of our sites, any page within our site can
and is accessed directly from a search by a user.
Let me give you an example. Earlier I talked to you about
placing navigational links on certain pages within your site. I
explained how telling my customers about the process we use in
embroidering custom designs on ball caps would be good if
accessed from the “custom ball caps” page and not from the home
page.
I created a separate page with information content available to
any customer who was interested in knowing more information
about our process. I would then want to make a link on only
those pages within my site that I might think customers would
need to know. For example, if later on I decided I needed to
write a series on the importance of using the right kind of
embroidery threads, I might consider linking back to “our
embroidery process” page.
Within the text of my report on our embroidery process, I write
that former baseball star Dwight Evans wears hats designed by
Tom’s Custom Caps. If an Internet user is doing a search one day
and types in the words “Dwight Evans” and my web site showed up
on the results page, the link from that search result would take
them to that page where the words “Dwight Evans” was found. It
would only make sense at least from the consumer’s perspective.
So, why is this important to know? More times than not, it is
your home page that is the “landing page” of search results. It
would probably surprise you to know how often other pages become
your landing page and not your home page. With this in mind, it
should help you in designing all or your pages within your site.
We have discussed some the importance of navigational ease.
Let’s assume for a moment that a searcher has landed on the page
we have just described. What’s next? Do we have a potential
customer or is this a fluke thing that “just happens”? You
should look at everyone who lands on your site as a potential
customer and in this case more than you might realize. If
someone is researching Dwight Evans, chances are they must
follow baseball. We all know that baseball fans wear baseball
hats. So, I would recommend strategically place a link on pages
that we might think of as “of little importance” that would read
something like this: “We design and sell custom ball caps”. A
searcher landing on that page should peruse the page enough to
find the reference to Dwight Evans and in the process discover a
gold mine.
So why not just make all your pages contain all the links to
everything on your web site? Use the “KISS” method (keep it
simple stupid). Ease of navigation is important. We have already
discussed that and bogging down a page or pages on your site
with link upon link can get confusing and frustration will set
in for the user. Once that happens, you have probably lost a
customer.
Let’s move back to our home page and focus on that some more. I
wanted to talk about other pages within your site to give you a
better understanding before we proceed with the further
development of the home page. Hopefully, this will aid in
comprehending how our site all ties together.
Have you ever seen a movie or read a book that seems to jump all
over the place and it becomes hard to follow? Did you enjoy the
movie or book? Did you even finish them? This is what we are
working on avoiding. We want our plot easy to follow, yet
enjoyable to read and most importantly, we want people to buy
our next book.
Think of your home page as the hub of your entire business
enterprise. No matter what page a user landed on, if you can
keep them there long enough, they will go to the home page. In
their mind they may be thinking, “There, I am back at the
beginning so let’s see what this is all about.”
A user has landed and you have those precious 8 seconds. You
have laid out your template so that it is attractive and clean –
easy to locate menus and links. Near the top you have created
about 50 to 150 keyword rich, well written text telling this
customer who you are and what you do. Hopefully they will want
to investigate further. Where do they go? Chances are they begin
looking for your “menu”.
A “menu” is going to contain the content of your site. I am not
going to attempt to teach you the terminology of navigation
because for myself I find it confusing. In simple terms, I’ll
try to explain what should be in a menu.
Depending on the size of your website, you may have one to three
menus. The most important menu we’ll call the “main menu”. The
main menu should contain links to the backbone of your site.
These would include your home page and all pages that you feel
are the key pages to your site. My ball caps site might contain
the following in my “main menu”: Home Page > Custom Caps >
Design > Prices > Testimonials and maybe a FAQ (frequently asked
questions). Testimonials would be an option as well. These links
are what I feel a customer would be looking for first. So, I
would place that menu near the top and easy to see.
Now let’s look at a sub-menu or a secondary menu. There are some
titles to other pages that are considered industry standards and
are recognized almost universally. I would suggest you stick
with those titles if possible. They would include: About Us >
Contact Us > Site Map > FAQ > and you could include here perhaps
some of your pages that you think might be of interest or are a
sub-page of one the ones in your main menu. This menu should
also be easy to find. Many times it might appear on the top of a
page and look something like this:
Home Custom Caps Design Prices Testimonials
About Us > Contact Us > Site Map > FAQ
Many designers choose to locate their menu on the left or right
side of the page. This is fine and acceptable. Place your links
from top to bottom by order of importance. Start with the home
page, then custom caps and right down through to FAQ page.
Remember we read just like the robots have been programmed to
read – left to right, top to bottom.
When your home page, or any other page for that matter, opens
onto a potential customers PC screen, what they see is similar
to a newspaper. All the important news goes above the fold. The
secondary news but also considered important goes below the
fold. This holds true for your home page as well. The first
thing people will see is what opens onto their computer screen.
Keep that in mind when designing your pages. It’s about a 50/50
split as to whether the human response to a new computer screen
image focuses initially in the upper left of upper right corner.
Both are prime locations – don’t put your picture of Spot in
either of these two places.
Before I go, let me give you a couple of tips about page design
in general. Internet users are lazy. That is a proven fact so
don’t make them work for it. Allow the eyes to work with ease
and don’t make them have to search for information. We talked
about contrasting colors etc. Make the text easy to read –
simple font with large enough size. Don’t use fancy fonts for
your meat and potato text. The only one that is impressed by
that is you.
As part of your “ease of navigation” keep your pages relatively
short. Don’t make your customers have to scroll for long periods
of time. I have actually been to sites that put everything on
one page that should have been on at least five.
For general information pages – like home page – a rule of thumb
I try to adhere to is about double the length of what you can
see when a page opens. Users would rather “click” to another
page than scroll. There are times when scrolling is acceptable.
If I created a page on my site that had text content the
equivalent of three pages on paper, about how to properly wear a
custom designed hat from Tom’s Ball Caps, it would be okay to
have them scroll as they read.
Next trip we are going to talk specifically about those
universal pages on our sites – how to create them and why they
are important or not. I also want to cover writing text and/or
content for web sites. Once we get our site designed the way we
want it, we are going to talk about what to with it.
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