PRO Article
Is Your Homepage Overwhelming and Underperforming?
Many B2B homepages are becoming more like Times Square every day. The real estate is dividing into a myriad of different billboards, each touting its own message: "Look at our awards," "See our customers," "Free trial over here."
Many such "billboards" are flashing or scrolling to catch the visitor's eye, often in competition with one another.
The question is, are your visitors like tourists strolling through Times Square on their way to a matinee with little time to spare, or are they a captive audience willing to watch and absorb all you hope to communicate?
Websites increasingly appear to assume the latter, but Web-analytics data prove the former.
Some Web designers can elegantly shoehorn anything into a homepage. They use Flash to pack complex positioning and differentiation messages into a one-minute video or slide presentation. They accommodate offers for a free trial and a demo by shrinking the offer buttons. They squeeze in sections for recent news listings and upcoming events.
But what is being overlooked is that more really is less. B2B website visitors are impatient and have the attention span of fruit flies. The more content you cram in your homepage, the less likely visitors will notice the most important content.
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Comments
I think this is a wonderful article! I recently told a client this very same thing! People aren't going to spend hours on your site looking at all your bling. If they're interested in your offering, they'll investigate as long as search and navigation are well structured, logical and accurate. I think Hubspot.com is a great example of how to construct your home page. Simple, informative and inviting, IMO.
Kathryn's article is a great example of staying focused - it's all meat and no fluff. Great points to keep in mind as I update my own site. Thanks!
Very informative article that comes at a time when we are going through the restructuring of our website. If anyone is willing to critique our website www.solaruniverse.com with the info in the current article we would love to hear it. Thank you Kathryn!
Thanks for the great article. You have me rethinking my homepage design that is perhaps overly focused on exposing the site content.
I accidentally gave a 1 star rating, I wanted to give 5 stars but have been unable to reverse it. Very sorry Kathryn!
Gah, that star rating system is messed up -- I tried to give you 5 stars, too, but it entered it as 2 stars :( I thought you had to click on each star to "fill up" all five, but that apparently was not the case. Sorry.
Excellent article!!!
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Moderator Update: Hi, Julie. Your rating has been corrected.
Great article! I wish we were empowered to follow all of these to the letter. We'd have an awesome Web site.
It would serve us all well to read this a couple times a year, take stock of our homepages -- again -- and refine and improve (again!). Thanks Kathryn!
This is one of the best, most informative and helpful articles I've read. Everything you say is a gem. I'm already thinking about changes to my home page ... and to those of my clients.