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Nov 14, 2003 4:45 pm		Optimizing homepage for first time users
Kyle Pero		Nick Usborne wrote a short article that really made a lot of sense about optimizing your homepage for first time users: http://www.uieroadshow.com/articles/usborne_article_3.html If your site is serving a bunch of different audiences with different needs then your homepage should concentrate on getting each user to the correct part of the site that will speak to them. Instead of using your homepage to brag about your company’s awards, news or highlights you should be using that valuable real estate to accommodate your user’s needs. I believe it’s much better to have a smaller, more streamlined homepage rather than a longer crowded homepage filled with useless information that the user doesn’t really care about. Users don’t care about your company… they care about what your company can do for them! Sure, users want to know your company is reputable and they may be interested in current company news and history, but that takes a back seat to addressing the real reason why they came to your site… to learn about your products and inquire about them (or, buy your products if your site is transactional). Here is the perfect example of a bad homepage: http://www.doubleclick.com/us/. DoubleClick has 16 different products/services serving a multitude of different users and you would never even know it from their homepage. DoubleClick’s product hub page would almost make a better homepage than what they currently have. If a top task of your audience is to figure out what product best suits their needs, don’t you think they would address that instead of informing the user on what events they will be hosting in the future? - Kyle Private Reply to Kyle Pero (new win)

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