4 ways to design a usable home page

Identify your website offerings and USP

Guide user to offerings and USP using some cool graphics or colors. Tell them what your website stands for

Setup clear cut navigation and guide user to starting point

Display mission critical information upfront and keep user informed about where they are and where could they go

Home page design is one of the biggest tasks in website design. Be it an E-commerce website, a social networking website or even a personal blog. Home page creates first impression and sets the conversation with users. However, should we design a home page only to cater user needs? But that does not talk about my personal goals, how should I resolve this conflict? Answer is  aligning your personal goal or company goals with user needs. And the end product is usable website home page driving good traffic and setting a value stream.

1. You need to be sure about your brand. Try to understand what service does your website offers and how can you showcase them to users. You would also like to tell your visitors about the unique factor or USP of your website. With this, try to understand what user would be looking for on your website. Identifying value that your website would add to user’s need is precisely what we would do in this stage.

2. Once you’ve identified your website USP, try to come up with analysis and tell users about how your offerings are different. Here you may use some stats and analytics to grab user attention. However, take care of conversation tone with you talk about competitors. Visitors should not feel that you’re forefully pushing your competitors down the pyramid.

This would facilitate to create a brand in user’s perspective. At this stage, you should work on establishing the trust and emotion through quality design

3. Efficient navigation is an indication of successfull website. Make sure visitors or users find exactly what they want in simplest way is the most important part of home page design. This would increase the drop-out rate and significantly increase the transaction click through.

If you have done primary noun analysis already, set up clear starting point for them. Guide users to starting point with some good color combination and annotations. Tell them exactly where they are and where could they go from the home page. In short, keep them informed.

4. Information display is  a key. Tell users why you can be tagged as expert in your domain. Push services and testimonials above the fold. Experience of others is the driving factor for them.

Here, make sure that you offer most important and goal critical details are present upfront. Do not ask users to click more than once to get there. You should take a note of user’s navigation model, efficiency and interest.

To summarize:

• Identify your website offerings and USP
• Guide user to offerings and USP using some cool graphics or colors. Tell them what your website stands for
• Setup clear cut navigation and guide user to starting point
• Display mission critical information upfront and keep user informed about where they are and where could they go

You should take a note of these 4 points at the design stage itself. Make sure everything we discussed above is reflected in the wire-frames and percolates down to developers. After all, there is noting good on earth compared a usable website.