Getting Beyond Hello

Tuesday, February 12th, 2002 at 11:01 AM | Category: Meryl's Notes Blog 1 comment

Nick Usborne has a quick read article on How to Get Visitors Past Your Homepage. I agree with the concepts he presents especially: Let them know what your site is about.

Too often, I arrive at a site, personal or not, without realizing what the hell it is about. I’ve been reviewing many sites for a project and I find I’m lost as soon as I arrive.

The sites that are successful at immediately communicating its purpose have one or more of the following:

  • brief statement giving purpose of the Web site at eye view (visible in a quick scan and above the fold – no scrolling required to find it)
  • slogan that says it all (i.e. Digital Web Magazine’s slogan is The web designer’s online magazine of choice.
  • have the ABOUT in an obvious spot like top nav, left nav, or bottom nav.

It also helps to put the slogan or description in the <TITLE> tag, but keep it brief otherwise it becomes an long and bothersome bookmark.

If you have a popular site and everyone knows who you are, don’t take that for granted. I still discover “popular” sites and can’t figure out what makes them so successful, what they’re about, or where to go.

This place? I have been working on a slogan, but haven’t been happy with any of them. Plus, I do have a redesign in progress… slowly. I did change one thing, though… I added weblog next to meryl’s notes in the nav so first timers know what it is.

Don’t give us so many choices that it frustrates more than helps the user. Look at Amazon. They have a ton of stuff, yet they somehow organize the site in a way that I never feel overwhelmed.

Tags:

Subscribe to this here blog: RSS or E-mail

Related posts

  • No related posts

1 comment

  • Posted by robyn on February 12th, 2002, 7:38 PM

    I had a very confused No Doubt fan at my blog last week that e-mailed me thanking me for the pics of Gwen, but wondering where the No Doubt content was. Oops! :-) Good points!

Get Updates