The home page is the most important page of your web site. It’s the page that most of your visitors will view. It’s the primary page that search engines locate first. Your site’s home page needs to be visually attractive, convey key information in a concise manner, and make it easy for your site visitors to find what they need. A poorly organized homepage serves no purpose and can eliminate any chance of achieving your site’s objectives.

When planning your home page, pay attention to all three factors — design/layout, graphics and content. If a visitor can’t find what they need within 5 seconds, they will go to another site. A page that is lovely to look at but doesn’t tell your visitors who you are and what you do means they’re going to go to a site that does. A page that is wordy and repetitive will bore your visitors, and they’ll move on.

Do not waste critical space on your home page by adding unrelated images and long, looped Flash banners that do little for your site. A good home page balances the use of images and well structured, SEO content.

Design/layout. There are three important elements here: navigation, legibility, and colors.

1. Navigation. Your site must have a clear navigational path for accessing site content. This may seem logical, but many sites ignore the “clear” part! Four things to keep in mind with navigation: (a) it must be consistent throughout the site; (b) it must be in a predictable location so the visitor can find it quickly — either above the header, just below the header, or on the left; (c) the navigation bar provides the visitor with a clue as to what page of the site they are currently on; and (d) a large site has a site map.
2. Legibility. No matter how good your content is, if it’s difficult to read, it’s going to be ignored.
   • Your font should be easy to read and the correct size for your audience. Don’t use Comic Sans font for your site if it’s geared to a professional audience. Don’t use a 10 point font for a site for senior services.
   • The background and text colors should complement and contrast with each other. Lack of contrast between text and background can ruin an otherwise well-designed site. No gray text on a light gray background. Dark text on a light background is easier to read than light text on a dark background.
   • Limit your use of capitalized text as it’s harder to read.
   • Allow sufficient space between lines (line height). Text that is tightly spaced is difficult to read.
3. Colors. Avoid the use of too many colors, non-complimentary colors, or overly bright colors. (For more information on use of colors, read our blog entry “Design Elements – Color and Whitespace“)

Graphics. This can be summarized as: (a) don’t make your web site out of one image; (b) make sure your graphics make sense — use your images and photos to illustrate what your company does, not just because they are pretty; (c) size your photos before posting them on your website to save on download times; (d) make sure you use the alt and title tags — both for visually impaired visitors who use text to speech output and for search engine optimization.

Content. When writing content for your site, keep these major points in mind.

1. Write and edit your content keeping in mind that your web site is not about meeting your needs; it’s about meeting your customers’ needs.
2. Make your site’s purpose clear — explain who you are and what you do. Concisely.
3. Start the page with a tagline that summarizes what your company does. Don’t automatically start your page with “Welcome” as your visitors have already made the commitment to go to your web site.
4. When linking to other pages in your site, don’t just describe what each page is about — use specifics and show some of your best content.
5. Avoid the “click here” link title; it’s much better to tell your visitors what they’re going to see when they click a link. After all, we’ve all accidentally ended up on a NSFW site.
6. Give your pages a search engine friendly TITLE tag.
7. Don’t use graphics for text!
8. And did I mention writing and editing your content with your visitor’s needs in mind, rather than yours?

By the way, these rules should apply to all your pages, not just your home page. Any number of pages on a site can be the entry (or landing) page. So take some time to evaluate your home page with a critical eye, and let us know if we can help!

A website menu is considered the most important element in website navigation. If the menu system on the website is not user-friendly, you will lose visitors very quickly.

Consider this. When you go shopping at one of the larger shopping centers for the first time, you won’t know where to go to shop for what you wanted. Unless you are the adventurous type, you will look at the large sign at the entrance that shows the shopping center layout to find out where to go.  You know the one that says, “You are here”.  Your website has to operate under the same idea. They must know all the time where they are while on your website.

Website visitors are usually those who are just browsing, and those looking for something specific. When the website is opened, the first thing they will do is look for the menu. Keep in mind that visitors usually will spend just seconds on a website looking for something they wanted. If the visitor has a difficult time finding the main menu in just those few seconds, you may lose them, possibly forever. It is always easy to remember those websites that were hard to use. (Remember the old saying about “first impressions”?)

There are horizontal, vertical, side, top, bottom, drop-down, sliding, and many other types and configurations of menus. We aren’t going to say any particular type is best because website content and design should dictate the best menu system. For brevity, however, here is a list of our ideas about menus:

1. They should be easy to locate and easy to read. Those flashing, exploding, floating, or framed menus may not only be irritating but are rarely indexed by search engines.

2. With your menu, visitors should be able to go to any page from any page. Remember that visitors do not always get to your website from the main page.

3. Menus should never drop down or slide out so much that the website content is covered up. If there are that many pages, consider a combined vertical and horizontal menu system.

4. The layout should be such that the visitor does not have to keep clicking through to get to the part they are interested in. Good website design means minimum clicks and won’t aggravate or lose the visitor.

5. From a design standpoint, the color and style of the menu should complement the website, not make it look out of place.

6. Numbers 1 through 5 above apply to sub-menus as well. Sub-menus, from drop-downs, slide-outs, etc., should meet the same standards as your main menu system.

Obviously this list is not all inclusive. There are many factors involved with menu systems on websites. Just like the website itself, the elements of design, colors, and operation of menus are just as critical in keeping those visitors.