In this issue:
- What's Wrong with Your Site? Tips For Creating a More Effective Home Page
- Resource Roundup: Web Style Guides
- About Web Insights
Issue 14
original publication: May 16, 2002
last updated: August 18, 2006
Feature Article:
Tips For Creating a More Effective Home Page
by Deborah Christie, POP Interactive
Q What's wrong with your site?
Many companies delayed reinvesting in their websites over the past year due to the economic downturn. Now business is starting to pick up and companies realize they need to redesign (or at least enhance) their site, but they don't know where to begin. As a result, one of the most common questions we are being asked by clients and prospects alike is, "What is wrong with my site and what should I do about it?"
A If your traffic is growing but your results are not, there might be some simple changes you can make to remedy the situation. This issue of Web Insights focuses on your home page, the most valuable real estate on your site.
Home Page How To's
If you don't know what's right and what's wrong with your home page, you're not alone. That's why we have put together these tips and resources for identifying what's working and for fixing what's not.
1. Track Your Traffic
For starters, use your site statistics to determine your home page conversion rate: how many (or few) visitors go beyond your home page.
Use the formula's provided in the following article to calculate your current home page access and conversion percentages:
- "Monitoring Visitor Conversion Using WebTrends" by Jim Novo, author of Drilling Down
[http://www.jimnovo.com/WebTrends-Tracking.htm]
"divide...single access visits by the total number of visitors who entered the site through the home page..."
Don't be surprised if you find upward of 70% of visitors never go beyond your home page. Keep in mind that what your particular stats show at any point in time is not as important as identifying and monitoring the trends. Once you know what your numbers reveal, you can take steps to improve them. And that's what creating a successful home page is all about -- it's an evolutionary process that requires regular fine-tuning.
2. Re-allocate Your "Real Estate"
Now that you have a better understanding of your home page conversion rate, it's time to improve it. This means reviewing your home page and re-allocating how you are using that precious real estate.
The key to understanding how to allocate the limited space on your home page is to know what your visitors want. Fortunately, the answer to this question is easy. Visitors want to determine what your company offers and what they can gain from their visit. If they can't determine this from a quick scan of your home page they usually leave.
If your statistics show most of your visitors are going no further than your home page it is time to make some changes. You can significantly improve your results by re-allocating the space on your home page and revising the design, content and navigation.
Jakob Nielsen, dubbed "the guru of web page usability" by The New York Times, identifies the ten most important things you can do to improve your home page:
In addition, the following case study shows just how dramatically a redesign can improve your results.
3. Deal With Your Design Don'ts
Your visitors are busy people. So it should come as no surprise that when a visitor finds a site quicker and easier to use, they use it more. What can be surprising is how significantly you can increase your results by addressing the problems that make your site seem slower and harder to use.
To get you on the right track, below are five top design don'ts. Avoid them to help turn visitors into customers -- instead of turning them away:
» Don't Break the Back Button
The browser back button is one of the most used navigation elements on the Web. Flash enhancements or page redirects could inadvertently be interfering with it and frustrating your visitors. Read more:
» Don't Use Non Standard Interface Widgets
(for the sake of using non standard interface widgets)
As visitors travel from site to site they want to use the skills they have already acquired. In most cases they are using the Web to accomplish a specific task and to save time in the process. They don't want to invest time learning how to navigate your site before they can use it.
This by no means precludes you from creating a site with a distinct design. However, working with the Web interface standards that have emerged is easy to do, and can make a big difference in your visitor to customer conversion rate. Read more:
» Don't Make Important Information Look Like Advertising
Size, color and animation used to be some of the most important tools we had to emphasize important information. Advertisers understood this too and used the same design techniques to deliver their messages.
Unfortunately, visitors have learned to avoid anything that looks like advertising, because they believe it IS advertising.
If your home page design has been around for awhile, it might be using design techniques that no longer work. Take a look to make sure the important messages on your home page don't look like advertising.
» Clarify Your Content
There has been and continues to be so much written on this subject. We trust that the message about how critical content is has gotten across so we're not going to dwell on it. Instead we'll simply offer these well-written resources:
» Re-Optimize Your Graphics
File size equals download time on the Web. And chances are your graphics could be further optimized without noticeably sacrificing quality. Use these primers to squeeze down your graphic file sizes and increase customer satisfaction with your site:
And if you're more ambitious, don't stop at the graphics -- optimize your code too:
Resource Roundup: Web Style Guides
It seemed that it would be appropriate to round out this issue with a few style guide and design resources:
And on the lighter side, sometimes you can learn what to do by seeing what not to do:
Copyright © 2002 POP Interactive, Inc.
Reprint and Linking Permission Information.