Anatomy of a Home Page
A Few Don’ts
The following home page features may send customers scrambling for their “back” buttons:
• Don’t make visitors register on your site simply to view merchandise.
• Don’t use pop-under ads. “If you don’t have the guts to show it up front, don’t leave it in the background for the customer to deal with,” advises Waldeck.
• Don’t display pictures of your founder and/or CEO unless he or she is a major part of your marketing and advertising (e.g., the late Dave Thomas of Wendy’s).
• Don’t give users the option of two home pages to view, depending on the speed of their modem connections. Assume they’re on a low-speed connection, advises Fahrland.
• Don’t display outdated content.
• Don’t use Flash animation. Even if it’s used for a relevant purpose, says Waldeck, it slows down load time. Save it for appropriate offerings on your product pages.
• And while they don’t label it strictly off-limits, most experts suggest that you avoid putting information about your public, human or investor relations on your home page whenever possible.
