Essentials Of Designing Homepages

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Essentials of Designing Homepages


The Universal Truths

Perfect homepage is a myth.

A homepage which delivers the predefined before the definition of “predefined’ is confined to history can be called a successful homepage.

Homepages evolve, freezing a homepage can freeze your business.


Fundamentals How are you going to make money? Who all should come to your site? How they should reach your site? How they should reach your

homepage? How long you want them there? Where should they go from your

homepage? What are your growth plans? Whom do you compete against?


How are you going to make money? Designed to make money Versus Designed

to win awards

Transactions Versus Depth of the page

Ultimate Objective Versus Starting point

Rewards Versus Retention

Message Versus Creativity

Speed Versus Wow factor


Who all should come to your site?

Define the following clearly –

Gender

Geography

Age

Ethnicity

Education

Income


How they should reach your site? SEO SEM Social Media Top of the mind recall Offline Campaigns Events Contests Affiliations Newsletters Stationery/ email signatures Networking and Link Building


How they should reach your homepage?

Apart from the normal reach factors

Through Sub-domains

Through Folders

Through result pages of search on your site


How long you want them there?

Google/ Bing approach

Yahoo approach

Mapsofindia.com approach

Dgreetings.com approach


Where should they go from your homepage?

Internal pages

Sub domains

To advertisers


What are your growth plans?

Is it all – what percentage are you done?

What are the verticals you want to pick

What is the horizontals you want to go in for


Whom do you compete against?

How often does your competition change homepage

What do they focus on

What is your competitors target index

What is the target user overlap


Revisit the homepage as often as possible