Think of a homepage as something a user takes in at 65mph. (photo credit: Andrew Canion)
Increasingly users think of the homepage as that place where the search box lives. Web analytics data bears this out. A typical homepage, particularly if there is a large and diverse set of products or information on a site, will see a vast majority of it’s clicks consolidated around the global navigation and search box. If you think of a user flying by your homepage at 65 mph on their way to the search box, then how much information are they likely to take in? How can you make a statement about the value of your site that a user can tune in out of the corner of their eye? The best homepages confront this behavioral reality and offer the same concise, impactful designs as those on highway billboards.
Given that About.com has almost a million articles spread over hundreds of topics, the homepage shows unusual restraint and clarity of message. Competitors ehow and dummies.com are more typical, deploying a page with extensive amounts of carousels and "featured" content boxes that serves more as portal than billboard.
Few companies understand the limitations of consumer attention span better than Apple, and their corporate website's homepage is exactly as one would expect: bold, visual, simple, and most importantly - fully digestible in about 2 seconds of viewing time.
Airforce.com is far more engaging than it's rivals among the armed forces (Us Navy & US Marines), with it's animated homepage making a strong commitment to it's central theme, "It's Not Science Fiction." This page shows one of the challenges of creating simplified homepages: excellent creative ideas are needed when one can't fall back on the old stand by - the page of links.
The original billboard homepage. In fact, this one's so simple it could be a tattoo. Yahoo is a cluttered disaster by comparison. Bing splits the differece, but it's decorative (and unrelated imagery) adds little impact from the branding perspective.
Retailer's web sites were quick to embrace the catalogue aesthetic, which is highly visual and showcases the merchandise over the cliched vernacular of a typical website. Daffy's pulls off something more subtle here than a catalogue. This page makes a bold and impactful visual statement about their brand promise, yet functions as a starting point for interacting with popular features on the site like the store locator and gift cards. And all elements work within the constraints of billboard inspired design.
Interactive agency R/GA deploys a common trick, but a nice bridge for those not willing to give up the notion that a home page should be crammed with links. Above the fold we are in billboard territory, yet a user who bothers to scroll will find an enormous amount of content on one of the longest homepages I've ever seen.
The non logged-in homepage of a dating site has only one goal - get prospects to sign up. All the major sites have similar approaches in their design, but Chemistry.com's is the one whose value proposition is immediately clear. Chemistry.com makes better matches because of better personality testing. It is no coincidence that the best branded page is also the one that would make the best billboard.
Herman Miller takes perhaps the most common of all home page design components, the rotating central carousel, and creates an impactful statement by fully commiting to it. Little else clutters up the page: carousel controls are minimal, imagery is striking, and messaging is impactful. A more typical implementation of the home page carousel, as one of many features cluttering up the page, can be found at Bestbuy.com and Hulu.com.
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