Homepages are considered some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Not even a square foot in size, the homepage is your company’s face to the world. In one short glance, a website’s homepage must communicate where users are, what your company does, and what users can do at your site. If a user has to ask “What is the purpose of this site?” it means your site has missed the mark, from which it’s nearly impossible to recover.
In order to communicate well, homepages must give appropriate emphasis to both branding and high-priority tasks. The homepage must also have a memorable and distinct look, so that users can recognize it as their starting place when coming from any other part of the website.
Top 9 Homepage Guidelines
Make the Site’s Purpose Clear: Explain Who You Are and What You Do
1. Start the page with a One-Sentence Tagline summarizing what the site or company does.
2. Begin the Title tag with the company name followed by a brief description of the site. The Title tag needs to provide good visibility in search engines and bookmark lists.
3. Group all company information in one distinct area – About Us.
Help Users Find What They Need
4. Emphasize the site’s top high-priority tasks by offering users a clear starting point for the primary one, up to four, tasks they’ll undertake when visiting your site.
5. For larger sites, include a search input box.
Reveal Site Content
6. Start your content on your homepage.
7. Begin link names with the most important keyword.
Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define, Interaction
8. Don’t over-format critical content such as navigation areas, users often dismiss graphics as ads.
9. Use meaningful images to serve as powerful communicators depicting items of interest to users.
For a more in-depth look at this topic, check out 113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability
excerpted from the book Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir.
