There is a proverb, the first impression continues for long. This adage is uniformly applicable in case of home page of a website. As it is the first page users stumble upon when they visit your website, a below par home page can frustrate them and they will never look back.

All you need to do is to attract your reader and get them to stay on your site. Even for the faster sites, 2 to 3 seconds are consumed for downloading the page. So that gives you 4 to 8 seconds to transmit your message across and keep them clicking through your pages. There are several methods to present your home page as unique and memorable so that the visitors keep coming in. Locate one that goes well with you and your site and utilize it as best as you can:

Navigation home pages consist of a lot of information in a small space. They act like a portal to the rest of the site packing in the places your readers can go. If you have a site with a lot of information, a navigation front page may be the way to go. Often users don’t come to the front page of large sites looking for precise information, they are looking for the route to the information they want. While you could argue that having that information right on the front page would be good, for a large site this isn’t practicable. If your visitors already know the site is large, they don’t expect to find the information on the front page.

For websites with one definite objective, an informative home page gets that purpose right out where the reader expects it. Sites that are focused around a goal, such as promoting something, showcasing artwork, or publishing a family photo album are well suited for an information home page. Make that objective the essential part of the page. Attract readers by displaying them a synopsis of the objective and then drawing their attention to the details and additional information that supplements that objective.

Splash pages are front pages that have little more than an animation or smart graphic and a link to enter the site. Splash pages are an effective way to improve your rankings in search engines, as long as they don’t have automatic refreshes to a new page. When you use a splash page, you can slim the content down to just the minimum which improves the quality of the search tags and content keywords. Bear in mind to keep them relevant, as your visitors will not wait on your site if the splash page implies a site that is not loaded or loaded slowly. Be sure to read the advantages and disadvantages of splash pages before you resort to a splash page home page.

Your home page should suit your site and your skills. Navigation home page will not suit a small site with few pages and a beginner Flash designer may not make the best use of splash page. But, you should also think about what message and information you are trying to express with your site. The home page is the place where people are going to form their first judgment.

Your front page should be the clearest page on your site. If people have to guess what it’s about, chances are they will have hit the back button without even trying. Your readers don’t want to work hard to get their desire information. So design your home page keeping that in mind.

Tags: Front Pages of Websites