Developing the home page to entertain through animation is not necessarily the best method for attracting viewership. Today, content is king and this will add more value to the website than any animation or graphic display. In the past, the trend was to entertain the viewer rather than offer information, and this analysis lead to the infamous “Splash” page which is now all but a thing of the past. We all remember the site which features a video, commercial or pop up which quickly became irritating. We were too busy to wait for commercials to end or to disable pop up ads, etc. This lead most of us to just leave the site without learning very much about the information we were searching for. IN this instance, animation the “skip intro” button was the most used button on the page.
Even in this tech savvy age, we are still finding sites that are more focused on animations of all types to include sound, video clips, etc. User friendliness went out the door and slick animation, ads and pop ups took over. Search engines are working on weeding out sites like this based upon the fact that they have no useful information to pass on to the viewer. It is the information found on the site that is most valuable, rather than gimmicks and entertainment features. Content is what gives you the conversion rate you need bring in new revenue.
The home page is not just a destination, it is a page that should be a guide to the rest of the site. The page should direct the user to find the exact info they need quickly and efficiently. If the viewer cannot find the info they are looking for quickly, they will leave your site and go back to searching for another link which can provide the information in a more timely manner.
With the increase of blogging which offers new and fresh original content, sites featuring entertainment themes are disappearing. These days, those that search for your goods and services are much more likely to find out about what you offer through an informative blog post. When they find this, they are entering your site through the back door and the home page is just one of the pages, not the main page of the site any longer.
Adding blog posts to the site and educating your viewership allows you to draw much more traffic to the site. The old method of putting all of the value on the home page has been replaced to allow all pages of the site to have equal value. Fresh and informative content is now what drives traffic your way. Pay attention to all pages of the site and develop the content to serve your audience. This will keep them coming back for more.
Happy Holidays from the Design Wizards at “Inside Design Orlando.”
