Your Face To The World

Good article on home-page design. I'm sure we can all agree on the importance of the home page, but the article goes into depth of the why and the how of it.

Some summarized points (lots more in the article):

"A home page's impact on a company's bottom line is far greater than simple measures of e-commerce revenues. The home page is your company's face to the world. " - Jakob Nielsen

There are only two important functions for a home page: The home page delivers the content to [users] that they are seeking (such as the top story on CNN ) or The home page provides strong scent to those pages that contain the content the user seeks.

What Do Customers Want?

When customers visit your home page, their attention span is limited. They are busy and want to find answers quickly. They don't want unnecessary distractions and will immediately leave and go to another site if they cannot find what they want on your home page. They do not want to wade through marketing messages.

When customers arrive at your home page, they expect to find what they want quickly. After all, the promise of the Web is to provide an efficient, alternative channel that complements other channels like bricks-and-mortar shops and corporate customer support.

When customers visit a home page (whether for the first time or as repeat visitors) they might want to satisfy an information need quickly look for contact information like a phone number or email address autonomously complete a task, without needing customer support solve a problem * buy a product