What makes a near perfect Home Page?

1. 61

   jamiekingmediaposted 13 years ago

   What makes a near perfect Home Page?
   
   What is the best way to set out our website home page? Lots of content, little content, engaging graphics, images, introduction text, summary of all the sites sections, news website style layouts, dymanic content, flash animations, "shop window" style layouts, etc.
   Some sites have very basic welcome text where users then select where they want to go, where other sites have a mass of content and can seem very busy. What's the best practices to apply?
   
   

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2. 81

   tom_catonposted 13 years ago

   I guess that depends on your target audience, the content you're showing, and the purpose of the site overall.
   
   For example if you are doing a sports news site, the updates are going to be constant and this will need to reflect on your home page strongly, people want to know what's happening as it happens, and the information needs be easy to pinpoint. So that sounds like a difficult mix of "Barraging" visitors with information while keeping the segments instantly recognisable.
   
   What I might do in such a situation is divide the homepage into distinctive sections (below a short main welcome and perhaps a top news rss feed), with each sport getting a section. At the top of each section, probably in the title I'd have a link to a page dedicated to that sport, while below that there might be rss feeds for latest news, links to special sections like merch or something.
   
   Of course that doesn't really answer your question, all I'm trying to say is that how you present a homepage has to be good for the audience that will be recieving it, it has to instantly give them what they need , which in the above case is distinguishable sections with fast, constant updating.

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3. 61

   jamiekingmediaposted 13 years ago

   No Tom, that's a pretty neat answer. The fundamental factor of what your talking about is pretty much the nucleus of it all.
   Yes all home pages will be different based around the target audience, but as you say, easily found information is going to be key.
   That opened my eyes on the matter to be honest, shall look at this in a new direction and see what ideas develope.
   I think best practice would be to have your users almost design the layout for you....?

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4. 77

   cashmereposted 12 years ago

   Your website can provide you with an alternative income or it could just go bust. So what makes a near perfect home page for your website? read more

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