KISS your home page

By
Angie Herrera

One of the best analogies for websites I’ve ever read or heard was written by Steve Krug. In his book, Don’t Make Me Think, he compares buying a chainsaw from Sears at the local mall to web navigation. I won’t get into it here, but basically, he discusses how you use the store’s visual cues (navigation systems in the form of signs and hierarchy) to help you scan shelves to find what you’re looking for. I think we can take that same analogy and apply it to a website’s home page. A website’s home page is much like – nay, exactly like – the entrance to a store. The storefront shows featured items, entices shoppers to go in and look around, and makes it clear it’s the front through other visual cues. It should not, however, contain every single product you have (unless every single product you have amounts to a total of 3 items or less not counting color or size variations). Why? Because it makes your site that much easier to ingest and decide what action to take next (that and it just might give your visitors a seizure from visual stimulation overload). Giving your visitors too much will confuse them, frustrate them, and cause them to leave as quickly as they came. Instead, KISS your home page with the old advertising rule: Keep It Simple Stupid. Attempting to put everything on your home page puts a great deal more importance on it than there needs to be. You not only keep your visitors from browsing in more detail (and in a less visually saturated, more single-item or single-topic place), but you ignore the fact that not everyone who lands on your site lands on your home page. Search engines do more than just search and list your site’s home page. Depending on your content, other pages such as specific product pages or service pages can rank well enough that a visitor will get to it. These other pages are important, and are part of what helps any site get ranked high (and more than once). There are also simple, practical no-no’s included with attempting to throw everything at your home page. If you’re showing every item you have in the form of images (even small thumbnail images), you increase the file size of that page with each one. That creates a slowdown in load time, especially for those on slower connection speeds or alternative browsing devices. (Speaking of alternative browsing devices, some mobile devices only allow up to a certain file size to be displayed.) Even if you’re showing only text links, that will get cumbersome very quickly as it will require 1) a lot of scanning/reading and 2) scrolling. Web users are used to a certain amount of scrolling, but seemingly endless scrolling pages are still a huge annoyance on the web. And because the Web is still very much a visual medium, too much scanning or reading of content will tire visitors quickly. Keeping your site’s home page clean, well-organized, and easy to use will increase the likelihood of a visitor staying and digging a bit deeper. Instead of confusing your visitor with too many links or too many featured products (or worse yet, all your products), a simple home page with engaging content (both photos and solid copy) will pique their interest. So do your site a favor and give it a KISS.