Raster Media's Soapbox

Recently I read a great article published in ClickZ online magazine comparing the weight of the world on Atlas’ shoulders to the weight of the amount of stuff you are trying to cram onto your home page.

The article was very insightful and there were several key items that were worth discussing.

In the website design biz, it’s easy for us to take a look at a website home page and scrunch up our faces with a collective “ewww” when we see things that aren’t up to par in regard to design and usability. It may not be as easy for a website or business owner to do the same thing with his own website so I’m submitting some theories from the ClickZ article that might truly help you to understand why I laugh behind your back at your web site’s home page.

The bottom line is that customers are coming to your site because they at least in a small way are interested in doing business with you. Your home page is a first impression and by piling everything your entire site should have on a single page it’s not likely that the appropriate conversions will even occur.

“Everyone wants to pile stuff on your home page. Products, partnership announcements, press releases, job opportunities, marketing copy, positioning statements, and sales special offers. In addition to that, you have your global navigation and menus, e-mail sign up form, and, of course, a lot of distracting graphics, videos, or animations to emphasize “key” content even more.

Often, too many internal company interests compete for real estate and prominence on the home page. Over time, nothing gets removed — new items are simply added to it.”

So what happens then…”if you emphasize everything then nothing becomes important.”

Just like every piece of your website you should have a purpose in mind – your purpose of your home page is “to get people off your home page”

Too much content is going to distract from your purpose so you need to sit down and ask yourself – what is the point of my website? Am I trying to sell something? Am I trying to educate people? Am I trying to entertain? Once you’ve identified your primary goal it’s important to make sure your website home page actually helps and does not hurt this goal.

We’ve all heard the old saying “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line” well the same thinking needs to be applied to your website, the shortest distance between a visitor and a conversion is a good clear call to action. Everything else on your website is ancillary to the actual conversion.

With all that being said here is a good rule of thumb: “Unless a visual element directly supports a key conversion action, it should be removed.”

So how do I apply these theories you are probably asking yourself?

The easiest way is to call an expert, call me, today and I’ll tell you what to do:

Geoffrey Radcliffe

Raster Media www.RasterMedia.com

702.943.1832

But if your phone is broken here are some recommendations:

If you are selling things on your website – focus on that! Not your testimonials, not your company history, not your logo, not your previous clients. Make it as easy as possible for your clients to buy your product. The same goes for companies that don’t sell but offer the option to get quotes, make it big, obvious and incredibly ovbious that the purpose of your site is to get a quote, contact an expert, pickup the phone to call or send an email.

If the purpose of your site is to inform, do not waste time on your home page with long drawn-out descriptions of “why this company was started.” GIVE ME THE MEAT! appetizers are good and all but I’m here for the steak. Make it easy and obvious where I can go to get the information I seek, don’t feed me non-relevant information it’s just making me angry.

But seriously just pickup the phone I’m sure you’ll be pleased with what we can come up with for you.

To read the full article in ClickZ here is the link: http://short.to/13kha