Tips, tools, and best practices for B2B marketers.

Are you spending too much time designing the home page?

April 24, 2006 | Posted by: Nicholas

From the latest UIEtips newsletter:

Several years ago, we came to the realization that there are eight distinct types of navigation pages that users encounter as they work through a web site trying to locate their target content. Since then, our research has consistently shown that the most successful design teams are those that understand these different page types and prioritize their design resources accordingly.

As we’ve researched further, it’s become clear to us that, out of the eight types of pages, the least important navigation page is the Home Page. But all too often, clients tell us they spend the majority of their time focusing on the design of the home page.

In this issue of UIEtips, Joshua Porter has written an excellent article suggesting that other parts of your site might be far more worthy of attention than the home page. Josh discusses how design teams may be better served taking a “Long Tail” approach to design, focusing on their site’s less accessed pages instead of the home page.

Joshua Porter and the author of the above, Jared Spool, will be discussing this and other UIE research at the upcoming User Interface 11 Conference this October in a full-day seminar, “Website Usability 2006: The Latest Research.”

Someone from EB should go to this. Seriously.