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Rick Henkin Karl Kasca
In
This Issue:
- Tip
of the Week - The Real Purpose of Your Homepage
- TheSolutionMovie.com
- Have a topic idea?
Let us know
Tip of the Week- The Real Purpose of Your Homepage
What do you think is the purpose of your homepage? Is it just to
introduce your company, let visitors know what you do, make a sale,
sign them up, all of the preceding or something else?
Unless
your homepage is actually just a landing page or a sales letter page
urging that a specific action be taken, without links to any other
content, I'd like to suggest one additional and primary purpose of your
homepage:
To get people off the homepage.
What
I mean by this is that your homepage should make your visitor aware
that there is additional important information or options for them to
consider and direct them deeper into your website.
People visiting
your website are coming for their own specific reasons. Unless your
homepage lets them know that more targeted content that matches these
reasons can be found inside your website, they'll leave. And, if they
do leave, both of you lose.
Too Much Clutter
Too
many homepages have cluttered designs and competing links making it
next to impossible for your visitor to find the information that
they're seeking. If everything on your homepage is emphasized, then
nothing will be important.
Elements that contribute to a
cluttered look are unnecessary animation or video, large or too many
graphical images, dense text, garish background colors, patterned
backgrounds, hard-to-read fonts and headlines, to name a few.
Guidelines for Homepage Usability
Jakob
Nielsen (who I've mentioned before because he's considered the one of
the world's leading usability experts), created a list of 113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability
in 2001 for ensuring homepage usability. If you read through the list,
you'll see that the guidelines still hold up pretty well 9 years
later. Good usability stands the test of time. It's definitely worth
the read.
It's also worth testing the design of your own
homepage. It's really very simple. Get a few outside people that do not
know your company and have never visited your website. Instruct them to
go to your homepage. Give them about 30 seconds to view your homepage
(the average most 1st time visitors will stay on a homepage). Then have
them answer the following questions:
- What does our company do?
- What can users do at our website?
- What is the purpose of the site?
Hopefully you'll hear the answers you were hoping for, maybe not.
Rick Henkin
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Have
a topic idea?
The
primary
reason that Karl and I've put together this website is to help you
make
more money. We know the things that you need to know, but we also
want
to hear about the topics that are of special importance to you.
Email
me with your topic ideas at:
Best
Wishes,
Rick Henkin and Karl Kasca
IncreaseOnlineProfits.comsm
Attract More Visitors. Create More
Customers
Please visit our
blogs at:
AttractMoreVisitorsblog.com
CreateMoreCustomersblog.com
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