How important is a website’s Homepage Design? Very important, in fact the homepage is the most important part of your web site. Your homepage can make or break your site and possibly your business.
The average user will spend only seconds per homepage before deciding whether not they want to spend time and or money with that company. We are living in a fast paced world. Everything we do and see is fast and we are constantly trying to find ways to squeeze more into our already too full days. Technology is and will continue to meet those needs. The design of that page must reach out and grab them and do it fast. We won’t get a second chance.
Doing this assignment has really hit home at just how long our sites will get under the viewing eyes of our customers. The hard answer is that our sites will get no time at all without a great homepage design.
I had a classmate do a five-second test on a random website (www.dishesareus.com) homepage. She had never been on the site before. Below are the questions I asked and her observation/answers.
- What is the company’s core business?Selling dishes.
- What captures your attention? Are there elements on the homepage that draw your attention immediately?The image of the dishes on the upper left, the list of navigational links on the left, the content on right (although I don’t know what it said or what the message was on the right–think it was just text with no headlines).
- What do you think you can do on the homepage?I saw the words “shop” and “buy” so I assume you can buy dishes. I’m guessing that maybe people who have dishes can also sell them to people who collect dishes.
The site is a basic site. The logo is at the top left corner of the page. There are a few photos of the products. The colors are drab and uneventful. I see long rows of tiny text that no one wants to read. I am not sure I would trust these people with my bank information or to mail me my products. This is a site that would get little of my time and none of my money.
I would change-up the colors, make the photos larger and arranged in an eye-catching way. I would use some organization to get extra information off of the homepage. This homepage is definitely a project.
I went to two websites with successful homepages www.hallmark.com and www.marthastewart.com .
The Hallmark site was full of pleasant colors, images and a scrolling sub head area that makes you look at their basic products. One thing leads to another. Nothing seems too busy, or confusing. I wanted to stay and look around and I did. I was drawn to many other pages. The only thing that I didn’t like was when I was sending a free email card to my mom it failed to let me choose the day to send it. The offer was there, but the link was not. That is the only thing I found that I would have changed/fixed.
The Martha Stewart site is bright and happy and yearns to be explored. I dug around just looking at the pretty many pictures. I found myself lost in the crafts and before I knew it I was finding out how to make lovely necklaces from cheap bracelets. I searched and searched and found nothing that I would change. Sigh… Martha smile…
On the other end of the spectrum I found some really bad homepages. Honestly, there are lots of pretty bad homepages and web sites on the internet. The two that I settled on were www.wheelchair.ch and www.badbeekeeping.com .
The Wheel Chair site was hard to look at. The colors are garish and there are many fonts arranged in a circus style. I am using the word “style” very loosely. The site needs serious organization. The only thing that might suggest anything about wheelchairs is a little logo on the top corners of the homepage. If I were given the task to fix this site, I would start completely over.
The Bad Bee Keeping site looks like it was created my 4th grade niece. At first glance I’m not sure what the purpose of the site is. I see bees and I see a photo of a child eating honey comb. The overall impression is dull and boring. The Bee background/wall paper is not bad, but the way things were put on top of are lacking.
