Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

I suggest a slide show alternating customers and technology, where a simple script flips through the photos after a few seconds each. (Better if you can show customers enjoying your technology, but that's not always feasible.) That way you can celebrate all your services -- and more importantly, your customers that the prospects visiting your site can relate to. Could be by industry, company size -- whatever sales and marketing tell you are the targets. (Don't forget ethnic and gender diversity.)

Even better than a slide show is a "cover flow" which aside from being very up-to-date also shows visitors at a glance that there are multiple photos, and which also gives them the gratifying control to flip through them at their own pace. I think the first implementation of a coverflow was iTunes (hence the name "cover" since they were showing album art) but there are examples elsewhere.

Since you have different audiences for your message, I'd encourage you to have your home page's goal to bring people to the category of your service most relevant to them, and place these focused images on the relevant pages.

If you're serving mostly consumers, then showcase average people using your products. If businesses, showcase business people using your products. Perhaps sharpen the focus on the products while blurring the images of the people to show what part of the message you're trying to convey.

Personally, I'm not a fan of animated banners/slideshows - they distract the eye from finding your core message easily.

Have you done a simple branding exercise? I would go with an image that is what is desired of the services you offer. Go with an image associated with reliability, high tech, security and/or speed.