Think about
-Site identity and mission
-Site hierarchy the site has to offer what can I find and do here?
-Search having search box is required most sites on the Home page.
-Teases Tell hints of the “good stuff”
-Content promos attention the newest, best or most popular pieces of content. (top story and hot deals)
-Feature promos invite users other sections of the site or try out features (personalization and email newsletters)
-Timely content Update frequently for success on your web site.
-Deals Home page space needs to be allocated due to advertising, crossoromoion, branding deals have been made.
-Shortcuts The most requested pieces of content (software updates, for instance) may deserve their own links on the Homepage so people don’t have to hunt for them.
-Registration Need links for new users to register and for old users to sing in , and let me know I am signed in.
-Show me what I am looking for and not Make Home page clear how to get to whatever I want.
-Show me where to start It is the worst that having no idea where to begin.
Establish credibility and trust For visitors, Home page is going to be a good chance to create a good impression.
-Home page is the waterfront property of the Web.
Everybody who has a stake in the site wants a promo or a link to their section on the Home page, and the turf battles for Home page visibility can be fierce. And given the tendency of most users to scan down the page far enough to find an interesting link, the comparatively small amount of space “ above the fold” on the Home page is the choice waterfront property. Even a site is so complex, it has to be the best Home page design and accomplish. The one thing you cannot lose and it is easy to lose that is conveying the big picture. You should make it clear enough what the site is.
-You should concentrate on four questions that the Home page needs and when you create Home page.
1. What is this
2. What can I do here
3. What do they have here
4. Why should I be here and somewhere else
If you get it, you are much more likely to correctly interpret everything you see on the page.
-The top five plausible excuses for not spelling out the big picture on the Homepage
1. If it doesn’t need to it’s obvious
2. After people have seen the explanation once, they will find it annoying
3. Anybody who really needs our site will know what it is :It doesn’t mean the people who don’t get your site right away aren’t your real audience. But it is unusual people who say I’d use that all the time, but it wasn’t clear what it was.
4. That’s what our advertising is for get people’s interest.
5. We’ll just add a “first time visitor?”:link If the site is very complex, link on the Homepage is a good idea. Because it is easy to screw up.
How to get the message across
There are two important places on the page where we expect to find explicit statements of what the site is about.
1. The tagline When we see a phrase that’s visually connected to the ID, we know it’s meant to be a tagline, and we read it as a description of the whole site. We’ll look at taglines in detail in the next section.
2. The welcome blurb It is a terse description of the site. The point is most users will be able to guess what the site is first from the overall content of the Home page.
-Use as much apace as necessary but don’t use any more space than necessary.
Keep it short-just long enough to get the point across, and no longer. Don’t feel compelled to mention every great feature, just the most important ones.
-Don’t use a mission statement as a welcome blurb
-it’s one of the most important things to test.
You need to show the Home page to people from outside to tell you whether the design is getting this job done due to no missing the “main point”.
-Nothing beats a good tagline.
A tagline can tell people what it is and what make and it can give people a good navigation.
On a Web site, the tagline appears right below, above, or next to the Site ID
-Good taglines are clear and informative.
Also, just long enough, differentiation and a clear benefit, personable, lively, and sometimes clever.
-Bad taglines are vague.
Also,generic,
-The handful of sites.
-Some sites do not need a tagline
-Sites that are very well known.
When you enter a new site right after look around the Home page you should say with confidence.
-Here's where to start if you want to search.
-Here's where to start if you want to browse.
-Here's where to start if you want to sample their best stuff.
Ex: make the search box look like a search box, and the list of sections liik like a list of sections.
Home page navigation can be unique
Navigation on the Home page is so important the same as on the rest of the site.
-section description, different orientation, and more space for identity.
It is also important that users can recognize the Home page just two different versions of the same thing. Also, keeping the section names exactly the same: the same order, the same wording, and the same grouping.
The trouble with pulldowns
Pulldowns definitely save space and one common approach is to use pulldown menus.
-seek them out to know where you are trying to expose the site's content.
-They are hard to scan if they use the standard HTML pulldown menu.
-The comes and goes so quickly makes it harder to read.
It is most effective for alphabetized lists of items with known names but much less effective for lists where i don't know the name of thing I'm looking for.
You have to think about yourself how well the Home pages get the job done. Answer these two question and think about for creating a good Home page.
-What's the point of this site?
-Do you know where to start?
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/mwv/navrules/navrules.htm
Here is navigation rules home page
http://www.opencube.com/index.asp
JavaScript of pulldowns
http://www.ndsu.edu/cms/kb/homepage/example/
Example: move content around to fill out the home page
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