What is a home page?

The first index page of your web sites is called ‘Home page’. Usually it should be index.html or index.htm or index.php etc. Some servers accept home.html too.

Functions of your home page:

Your home page should do TWO essential functions.

1. Pull your visitor into your inner product pages. If the home page itself is the sales page then you need to keep the visitor on the same page.
2. Have subscription form to get your visitors email address.

Here are some home page designing tips:

1. Loading time:

* try to be below 40 kb
* fast loading images
* specify height and width of images
* html with out erros
* WYSIWYG editors bloat up your html code. so try using text editor part of your html editors instead of visual editor.
* images only home page don’t attain good ranking in search engines.

2. Subscription form:

If you have a list try to get your visitors email address by offering a free trial, free product or free ebook etc. Display the subscription fom on your homepage.

3. Content:

Put content that related to your products or a list of your products with some text under them. Don’t forget to include some keywords in that text.

4. Links to your Products:

Make it Easy for your visitor to reach your product pages. On each page you can use same navigational menu. So your visitor can reach any page on your web site with two clicks.

5. Headings and subheadings:

Highlight your product benefits or services. Put your content as short paragraphs. Beleive it or not, most visitors comes to your web site with tubular vision. They just focus on what are looking for … So highlight important benefits of your product.

6. Promotions and sales:

If you are offering any promotions on your products like free upgrades for limited time or discounts display them bold on your home page. This may make your visitor click on your link and check out your product.

7. Links to Outside domain:

As a rule of thumb, don’t put links to other domains from your homepage which is also your sales page. This distracts the reader and allows him to move away from your site.

8. Pop-ups on Your home page:

Personally I never liked them before and even I don’t advice to use pop ups on your web sites. If you do a search on Google, there are many searches for the term pop-up blockers.

pop up blocker – 135,000
pop blocker – 135,000
popup blocker – 74,000
free pop up blocker – 22,200

9. Home page ranking:

Try to stick on to one url in link exchanges or ezine articles. So you can maintain good ranking for your home page.

10. Look professional:

Little professionalism on your home page keeps your visitor few more seconds. And that few more seconds counts a lot to increase of your newsletter signups and sales. Little logo, your web site motto, same font, display of your products are other important things to take care of.

Author: Radhika (c)
http://www.webmasters-central.com/




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Posted in: Web Design