Sunday, June 20, 2010

Increase The Usability Of Your Homepage - In 8 Easy Steps

Homepage is the face of your website. No matter where your visitors land from, the homepage continues to be the most popular page of your website because that is where the browsing journey begins.Therefore, you need to devote a good amount of time and effort to design your homepage and make it fair high on the usability quotient. Here are 8 ways you can do it:

Include a Tagline

Draft out a one-sentence tagline that explains to the visitors the purpose of your website and company. If you are fairly new in the market and wish to create awareness about your products and services, a tagline is a must for you. This is because the tagline can be squeezed under your brand name and it can be uttered with the company name in the same breath. A good tagline instantly informs the reader what the company is about and how useful can it be.

Mark Title Tags

Make sure the title tag of your homepage begins with the company name and gets followed by a brief description of the website. Avoid starting the phrase with 'The' or 'Welcome' etc.

Provide Corporate Information

Visitors seldom visit your website to gather information about your company and business. But that doesn't negate the necessity of putting clear information details about your organization on your website. Corporate information is absolutely essential if the website aims to support investor relations, PR or other recruitment process. It is all the more necessary for smaller companies to establish credibility in the market.

Clear Information

People come to your website
with an aim. Either it is to get information or it is to share. Whatever may be the reason for their visit, make sure they find the route readily available on your homepage.

Include a Search Box

Search box is an indispensable tool for websites, especially so for large websites. You cannot expect your visitors to scan through all the pages of your website in search of some particular they have in mind. Therefore, the homepage of your website should have a small search box that scans through the entire site and brings back the desired piece of information.

Reveal Good Content

The homepage of your website should carry the most important pieces of information. Put the most fresh and latest content that you have on your homepage so that users find it well updates every time they come in.

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. If you start your link names with important keywords that they are potentially looking for, they instantly stop there and ponder further.

Use Meaningful Graphics

All the graphics and mages that you use on your website should be relevant and complement the content therein. Otherwise you would just be adding weight to the load time of your website and irritating visitors at the same time.

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