Trim down your homepage.
Your homepage should draw people into your site and make them want to see more. It should not only be easy to read but should load quickly as well. Although high-speed internet is quickly becoming the standard, there is still a large percentage of people who connect through dial-up. If your homepage takes too long to load, then you could be losing large numbers of potential customers. In short, make your homepage easy to view for any internet connection.
Is your Flash driving away visitors?
First, consider who your core audience for this website is–if it is mostly small communities with slow dial-up connections, Flash intro animations will not be ideal and will likely drive the visitors away. If you are seeking a high-end business-to-business website, then a simple and classy Flash banner would be a nice compliment to some keyword-rich introduction text on the homepage. Be wary of Flash-only entry pages–these are solely for humans and will not be nice “food” for search engines.
Wait, what was your message?
Think of your homepage as a billboard for your site. You only have a few seconds to grab your customers’ attention so make your message clear. The design of your site should accentuate your message not obscure it. Remember content is king and site design should be the King’s loyal servant–not the court jester.
Can you help me? I’m new here and I seem to be lost.
People have become comfortable navigating the internet because there are general similarities between websites. One of these similarities is the navigation bar. Placing this bar on the top, left, or right is acceptable and will be found by most people. Some sites, in an effort to be creative, turn their website navigation into a difficult-to-understand maze of clicks and animation. Your website does not exist to change the fundamental way people deal with the internet–it exists to draw in new customers. Do not make your website hard for them to navigate or you risk losing viewers.
Play it again, Sam… But give me the choice to stop.
If you must use background music on your site make sure there is an easily accessible control to stop/mute the music. In fact, you may want to rethink having the music automatically play when people visit your site. Some people might be navigating from inside their quiet office and may not appreciate that your music plays on its own. No matter how much you like the song it is usually best to give your viewers the option.
