Web Design Usability – 10 ways to improve your homepage

Web design, Internet Marketing & SEO

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Web Design Usability – 10 ways to improve your homepage

29 November 2008 No Comment

Usability plays an important role in web design. The importance of usability on a company’s website is vital to its success. Whether a company’s websites is a small or large, the website acts as the company’s face to the world and is often the starting point for most visits to the website. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website’s business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is certainly worth the investment.

A well designed and optimised website has better indexing of all its different pages and as such users do not always enter the website from its homepage. The homepage nevertheless is the most important page on the website and in most cases gets a much higher page view than any other page of the website. Even though a user may enter your website from a link to one of its internal pages, the homepage will be one of the first pages a user is likely to navigate to and review it. No matter where your visitors land from, the homepage is likely to be the most popular page of a company’s website and provides an insight into the website.

Due to its importance, special care and attention should be given to design the website’s homepage.

Here are some ways to improve the usability of the homepage:

1. Include an effective Tagline

Include an effective Tagline at the start of the page that describes the website and provides an insight into the company. The tagline should be short, descriptive and keyword rich. Including the most desired keyword in the tagline will have a significant impact on its rank on search engines.
What the company does should be clearly evident to users if the chosen tagline is effective.

2. Quick to load

The homepage should be quick to load and efficient. Images and other website elements should be appropriately optimised and should have small file size. A slow loading homepage is most likely to drive users away to competing websites. Particular care should be taken if you are using flash or other graphics that require special plug-ins to work.

3. Clean, Clutter free layout

As the homepage is important, part of your website, the chances are there is a lot of information displayed. It is hence important for the layout to clean-cut and free of clutter. Graphics and other elements should not be overdone.

4. Include appropriate Meta tags

Meta tags such as title and description also play an important role in website usability. In addition to helping search engines, the title tag improves usability as it appears in bold in the top blue appears of the internet browsing software. As such the title tag is essential for branding.

Whether you use your company name or keywords in the title varies from website to website and on branding requirements. However using a combination has proved effective for many websites. Similar to the title the description meta tag also plays a role in website usability. Unlike title, the description tag is not visible to the user on the website. It is however commonly displayed in search results to provide a description for the link. As this is likely to appear on search engines, it should be well formed and provide a meaningful insight into what the website does.

5. Provide useful independent information not just information about your company

Visitors to a website rarely visit the website to solely gather corporate information about the company. In many cases users require a particular service independent of the company that is offering it. The user may require additional independent information that can help in making the right decision. It is common practice for websites to offer additional information related to the industry that can help a customer do so. The homepage should make this clear and offer a combination of corporate and miscellaneous information. Offering a wide range of well researched information adds credibility to the business. This can be particularly helpful for smaller businesses that need to establish credibility in the market.

6. Include a search feature

Including a search box is becoming increasingly important to websites especially as websites now have a lot more information than what they used to. A user cannot be expected to browse through each and every page of the website to find what they are looking for. Having a search box in a clearly visible place on the homepage greatly improves the website’s usability.

7. Include good content on homepage

As the homepage is the most important part of the website, it should be used effectively to reveal good content on the website. The homepage should include the most important information. The important sections or article on the website that are either important to the company or offer information that can be of interest to users can be highlighted on the homepage. This will not only provide focus to the important information but also enhance the website’s appeal.

The content on the homepage should be fresh and updated regularly so that users find new, updated information the moment they arrive on the website.

8. Use keywords in link

Visitors to the website do not spend enough time to read through all information on the website. They are likely to glance through the information quickly pausing only at information that catches their attention. Including the keywords in links helps as users are more likely to click and visit the page. if start Links with Keywords Make it a point to begin the link names with the important keywords of your website. This is because internet users do not stop to read the contents of a website very carefully. Their attention span is limited to just scanning through the text and catching glimpses of anything that they find important.

9. Pictures speak a thousand words

The homepage should be visually appealing and catch a userâ€™s attention. Most users decide in the first few seconds of visiting a website whether to remain or navigate away to a competitorâ€™s website. Graphics or images can be used effectively to enhance the visual appeal of the website and also to complement the information being presented. It is important for the images to be relevant and in context with the information.

10. Include call to action

One of the most important purposes of a website is to generate sales or leads for the business. Research indicates that placing appropriate “Call to action” statements in a clearly visible part of the website can have a big impact on conversion rates. It also improves usability as call to action statements provide customers with an option to interact and communicate with the company