by Abigail Zhu

Created on: February 18, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

The first impression matters, just as clothes and dressing are to interviews, so are homepages to websites. The way information is structured and the positioning of the layout plays a critical part in keeping your potential visitor on to explore the rest of your website, basically its one of the main factors that makes them want to linger on longer on your website.

First things first, a homepage should not have too much information cluttered together; making it difficult to read and know what is happening. You would not want to "scare" away any potential visitor they moment they enter your homepage and are bombarded with tons and tons of information. The key is simplicity.

In the words of Jakob Nielsen (2000), "web users want to find want they are after quickly and if they don't know what theyre after, they nevertheless want to browse quickly and access information they come across in a logical manner". And that is just what a homepage does, from the positioning of the information to its layout.

A homepage is the most visible part of the web design and plays a critical role in giving that first impression, whether any visitor wants to stay on or leave your website; has information been presented to them in an efficient manner that will keep them coming back?

Page Design
A good page design is an important factor for optimal user experiences under realistic circumstances a gorgeous looking website that has too many high quality images or intensive usage of flash elements takes a longer time to load then one with lesser or compressed images, especially for those with slower internet connections: would visitors be willing to wait for the page to finishing loading or would they get impatient and just go somewhere else altogether?

Usually the homepage of any website should contain information that introduces visitors to what the whole website is all about. Having a whole blob of information that is unformatted makes it hard for the visitor to scan through what they are looking for. Information should be summarized and categorized into a pleasant and easy to read layout, making it easier for visitors to scan through for what they want; letting them browse through quickly and access to any relevant data.

One good way for ideas when creating or improving the homepage would be to research on (visit) other websites that are similar to your own: put yourself in the shoes of potential visitors; would the manner in which the information is displayed (layout) on these websites help

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