Is your home page web design brilliant and engaging or dull and boring? "You can't judge a book by its cover," is a very true statement indeed. Nevertheless, we often do just that. While cover design is an important issue if you want to have good book sales numbers, have you ever considered how this translates to your website's home page? Your home page is as important-if not more-than a book cover should be to you. Since your visitors take but a few seconds to deem your site worthy for further investigation, this is where you should focus your efforts to provide a glance of the business that will capture their attention.
To begin, get to know your target market. After all, they are who you are building your site for. Start by asking yourself a few basic questions. Questions like: What are their desires? What are their color preferences? What is their income level? What is their level of education? If you don't know the answer to these questions by all means, create a survey and ask them.
Once you have a good handle on your target market, it will enable you to provide them with the information they seek in an appealing and easily navigated manner. I say easily navigated manner because this information will tell you if you need big and chucky, sleek and sophisticated, or cartoonish and colorful buttons and backgrounds.
Sometimes you may want to break out of the norm and present your brand in a whole new light. As an example that I was pointed to in one of my marketing newsletters, Luhsetea, a tea company, broke out of the norm to capture your attention in their use of a cartoonish, colorful dark blue and red design rather than the standard brown and green custom template.
When deciding where to place your navigation there are three basic placement options: top, left, or right. Each option has its own merit, so be sure you consider your visitor first before making this crucial decision. Top placement is becoming the norm. Visitors used to look to the left side for navigation information as a rule, but with today's instant gratification society web designers and business owners alike are opting for the top placement more often than not. As for right-side navigation, the reasoning behind this is simple. Most people are right handed and therefore it is easier to click on the right side of the page than to have to scroll all the way to the left.
Regardless of where you place your navigation, please consider the color blind individual; don't use blue on blue or other hard to differentiate combinations. One site I found helpful in this area is snook.ca's colour contrast check. You may find it helpful as well.
Another consideration is the evolving responsive web design. In today's mobile connected society people are viewing your web site on multiple platforms. While responsive web design is still in its infancy, it is certainly a contender for your consideration when it comes to design.
Responsive web design isn't just about the reflow of content, the W3C is working hard to give you the option of resize and reflow for pictures and text sizes as well. One thing you should be aware of is that all browsers, cross platform, have adopted a standard default font size of 16 px. So, if you want smaller or larger text something other than normal must be specified in your design. And, if you want it to be responsive you can no longer use specific pixel dimensions, it's time to start using percentages, which translates to the use of em or rem measurements. Stay tuned as this is a developing technology and certain to take hold in the next generation of web design.
One parting thought: While you must design for your market you also must offer information, above the fold, that will capture their attention. A big fat "Welcome" is really, not what they are looking for, so as much as you want to welcome them, don't. Remember, you only have a few precious moments to intrigue them into looking further. Why waste even a second?
What they want to know is whether you have the knowledge, service, talent, or product that they seek. So, spend time writing your copy in a customer friendly, consumer centered style.
It can be both difficult and fun to design a user friendly, attractive website that will engage your visitor. Take the time to learn about your target market and create a truly unique and well-thought out experience. You'll be ever-so glad you did.
