Effective homepages are simple and easy to access, communicate the organization’s and site’s purpose, show engaging content, and prompt users to take action.
Mobile-first web designs cause significant usability issues when viewed on desktop. Content becomes overly dispersed across long scrolling pages with expansive white space and enlarged images and fonts, making it difficult for users to consume and understand the information.
The NN/g website homepage now incorporates variable fonts and a wide-screen layout — 2 technical adjustments which improve the user experience for a subset of users on supported devices.
A site logo linking to the homepage is not enough. Logo design and placement, as well as the presence of a text link to the homepage affect success of navigation to homepage.
Web design is stabilizing; the average homepage is only about 40% different than it was a year before, corresponding to 3 years between complete redesigns.
Intranet homepages have become very similar in their basic layout. Intranets that look the same can nonetheless differ drastically in usability due to different features and content.
Ten usability mistakes are made by about two-thirds of corporate websites. The prevalence of these errors alone warrants attention, especially since they appear on sites with significant investment in usable design.
A company's homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website's business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment.
These design guidelines are excerpted from our book Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed which contains more details, including copiously annotated screenshots of 50 homepages.
Users' reactions to early design ideas for the Sun Microsystems' 1997 Web site demonstrate that users are becoming more web sophisticated, and prefer straightfoward access to content.