Posted by Amitabh Shukla on October 21, 2008 in Web Marketing
Homepage is the most important area of a website. The primary task of a home page should be:
Even if users are landing on inner pages from search engine or external links, they turn to homepage to know what the website does. Homepage is also one of the most visited areas of a website. Extra effort and attention is required to design a usable home page.
On an average a user spends 25-35 seconds on homepage which is why designing homepage is a complex task. The homepage should be able to make its point quickly and effectively and that too in 25-35 seconds. In this time a visitor has to go through introduction, announcements and figure out where to go next.
Lets us have a look at some of the essentials that must be present on all types of home pages:
What about the amount of content on the homepage?
As mentioned earlier, a user on an average spends 25-35 seconds on homepage. Most of this time is spent on figuring out where to go next. That means a visitor is only going to spend 10-15 seconds for reading. Let us assume that on an average a person can read 5 words per second. This means that one should not have more then 60-100 words of reading material on homepage.
What about the scroll?
75-80% of the visitors are not going to see what lies beyond the first screen on homepage according to usability studies. So beware before making a long home page as it will only be read by 20% of your visitors.
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10/22/2008 at 9:21 am
Rightly pointed, I believe all four aspects are equally very important.
If at all a website could give the “WOW” effect to the customer on their first visit, and then show up some quick gains for him, you have got a loyal user in your user base.
10/22/2008 at 10:40 am
i agree its like in news paper writing you put the most important thing first then the less important after