Taking Back the Homepage: 12 Ways to Design For the Fickle Web User

July 30, 2008 / Design

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Photo by jstar.

It appears that the glory days of the homepage are almost over. Jakob Nielsen has been finding that web users are becoming more and more fickle. Instead of going to the homepage and nosing around the site using categories and site searches, people are instead using Google to find everything and landing on a very specific page. Web users have learned how to master the interactive environment of the web, and are becoming very good at finding what they want. So instead of doing this:

Go to site homepage
Use navigation or site search to find product
Go to product page

Users have completely cut out the need for going to the homepage by doing this:

Search for a product/page on Google
Go directly to that page

Are you designing for the shift?

This poses an interesting problem for the web developer. How do we get smart, Internet users to go to our homepages when they don’t necessarily need to?

In order to start sending people back to the homepages of our Web sites, a few things have to happen. For starters, we need to ultimately gain the web users’ trust so that they’ll want to see more of the site. Once they trust the Web site to give them excellent, informative information without plastering them with popups and ads, then we encourage them to complete a goal for the page they’re on.

Every Page Needs a Goal

Each second that that the browser spends on your web page is precious. Every page on your Web site should work towards an actionable goal. A goal could be:

Buying a product
Signing up for an rss or email subscription
Signing up for a free account
Clicking on a link to get them closer to one of the above actions
… and many more

Each page should at least move the user closer to completing that goal. If you can funnel your users into a goal quickly and easily, they’ll also benefit because they’ve found useful information quickly. Completing goals is a good indicator that the user has built trust with your site

Keep ‘em Coming Back

Now that you’ve built the user’s trust, there’s a great chance that the user will want to check out other pages on your site, like the homepage. In order to keep them coming back to the usually neglected homepage, you’ll essentially need to do three things:

Make the visit worthwhile
Capture their attention
Keep their trust

Here are a few ways to make sure the user is stimulated and feels comfortable on the homepage of your site.

1. Offer quality content on the homepage

Content is King. A savvy web user is going to see pretty quickly through snake oil copy, or even content that’s fluffy and doesn’t add value to the site. Use high-quality content that is updated frequently to get people back to the homepage. The user has to find value in what you’re providing before it makes a decision to become a loyal visitor.

2. Get to the point

More often than not, homepages aren’t always explicit in what the site is about. Don’t waste your visitor’s time by adding Web users have little patience for content that doesn’t help them. Meandering, long-winded content on the homepage is a sure way to turn away site visitors. Nielsen thinks most web developers haven’t figured this out yet.

“People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said.

“I do not think sites appreciate that yet,” he added. “They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them.”

3. Use Promotions

Sites like Threadless use promotions every week that keep people coming back every week to check out the new winning T-Shirt designs. It also helps that the contest results are changed every Monday, so users know to come back every week on Monday.

Promotions done at timed intervals are great for keeping interest and excitement centered not only on your site and products, but also on the homepage as well. However, it’s crucial that the promotions aren’t cheesy or un-authentic. Authenticity is key when it comes to keeping the trust of the web user. Be sure to stay away from gimmicky promotions, and only do promotions that add value to the user’s experience.

4. Weigh every link in the navigation

Navigation systems are crucial to allowing the user to quicky find more information, once on the homepage. Giving the users lots of links to different parts of the website only clouds the mission of the smart web user. Make sure your navigation system is simple, but has enough information.

5. Make sure the design doesn’t break

This falls in the “duh!” category, but I’ve created many sites that IE wasn’t compatible with. Compatability between browsers is a tricky thing to master, but if you can ensure that if your site looks great in modern browsers (IE 6 and above, Firefox, Safari), you’ll do fine. You can check browser compatibility for free using Browsershots.org.

6. Don’t go overboard with Ads

There’s nothing wrong with ads. Ads help alleviate some of the costs associated with hosting and bandwidth. But sometimes web developers think it’s a great idea to litter web layouts with all sorts of ads. This strategy doesn’t pay off because it adds banner blindness and most importantly, it takes away from the user experience. If your ads aren’t helping the user in some way or are, even worse, trying to trick them, the user is as good as gone. It’s beter to err on the safe side and have less ads or none altogether.

7. Speed – Make sure the site is snappy

If your site takes a long time to load, a new visitor who has no loyalty to your site won’t hang around to wait for it. Odds are there are plenty of Web sites other than yours that can help the visitor, and they’re just a Google search away.

Use good practices for fast-loading page design, and check it with web page analyzers to ensure that the pages are loading as quickly as possible. If your site is heavy with css and javascript, you might try out this nifty script that combines your files and reduces load time drastically.

8. Keep the design clean and clutter-free

If you’ve ever stayed with a friend who’s house is really messy and cluttered, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s not fun. Cluttered, unorganized surroundings are stressful and make us anxious. This holds true in the web world as well.

Keeping your page design clutter-free is a great way to help the user find the content quicker. If your site’s design is clean and relaxing, the user will be more inclined to stay longer.

9. Give them just enough information

Only show the user what they need to know, and nothing more. This is one of the most difficult aspects of development and design, but also one of the most important. Giving visitors too little information confuses them, so they leave. Giving them too much information bores the visitor, and they leave. So it’s incredibly important to give them just enough information, and never more.

10. Checking validation helps

It’s always, always a good idea to check your html and css validation. Sometimes bad validation means that there are errors in your code that might not be affecting the page when you view it, but it might affect visitors on different browsers and computer platforms. Many web developers overlook the validation stage, but stopping validation errors early on mean that your site design will stay consistent and unbroken.

11. Create awesome product pages

If you can create compelling, beautiful product pages that a web searcher really appreciates, there’s a much higher chance he’ll want to check out other parts of your site. Also, you’ll most likely have to attract the visitors to individual pages (like product pages or blog posts) before they’ll give your homepage a chance.

12. Keep their trust

Now that you’ve gotten the web surfer to your homepage and they trust you, don’t do anything to compromise that trust. The second that the visitor smells something fishy (lots of ads, tricky wording, etc.), she’s gone for good. Don’t compromise a valuable repeat visitor by adding unethical or questionable aspects to your Web site. These usually come in the form of ads designed to trick users into clicking on them. In the end, it’s not worth it to scare away potential repeat visitors and subscribers.

About the Author:

Glen Creator of http://webjackalope.com

Editor of Web Jackalope. Follow Glen on Twitter.

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