We’ve just got back from some detailed user testing and the importance of getting the home page to answer VERY LOUDLY the user’s immediate question’s “What is this site? What is the purpose of the site? Who is it for? What can I do here” is clearly still so important…
If the purpose of the site is not clear to the user within the first few seconds of landing on the home page then the user often makes up a site purpose in their mind. This distorts their whole experience of the site making it much harder for them to interpret the site, ultimately meaning they will misinterpret something, get frustrated and leave.
When users do “get it”, understand the purpose of the site, they are much much more likely to understand the rest of the site, follow the carefully crafted user journeys and information scents – achieve their goals and have a good experience…
Getting the purpose of the site across
Every element on the home page builds a users understanding of the purpose of the site and what they can do on the site.
That being said when testing with eye tracking we really saw users scan two areas of the page where they expect to find a concise and easy to understand statement of the purpose of the site, these were the ‘tag line / strap line’ – right next to the logo and the ‘welcome blurb’.
By tweaking the text in the tag line and welcome blurb we were able to ensure participants “got it”
– right next to the Logo / Site ID is one of the most valuable bits of ‘real estate’, when users saw some text visually connected to the Logo / Site ID they knew it was meant to be a description summarising the whole site
The welcome blurb – this short description of the site, above the fold in an obvious position should be a terse description of the site, try and keep it to less than 30 words, we found this really reinforced the tag line if it echoed the tag line and expanded on it slightly.
see: www.wales.com (this wasn’t the site we were testing but is a good example of the principle)
Why have both a tag line and welcome blurb?
Not everyone will use both these elements; if someone is deep linked into the site then there will be no welcome message so the tag line but the tag line next to the logo should give the user a good summary of the purpose of the site. So have both on the home page and use the tag line throughout the site.
In a nutshell – getting the message across
- Don’t be subtle… don’t take the approach “we don’t need to, it’s obvious”
- Use a tag line right next to the site’s Logo – and make sure it is easy to understand
- Use welcome blurb to reinforce the tag line
- Good tag lines are clear and informative
- Vague tag lines are bad
If you can test the site on someone who hasn’t been involved in the site’s design asking the question “What do you think the purpose of the site is”, if the participant can give you a credible answer you’ve cracked it – nice work…
….and it helps with search engine optimisation (SEO)
Twitter and Facebook do it
see: www.twitter.com
Of course some sites don’t need to follow these principles – because they are huge global brands: Apple, BBC etc.
See also:
For a really great no nonsense summary of usability read this book: Steve Krug: Don’t Make Me Think – a common sense approach to web usability.
