What does your homepage say?
Your homepage should say one thing, well one and a half. It should what you are and why I should care, and it should say it really clearly.
Now this is a lesson it’s easy to forget (like so many of the best lessons) but I just came across a wonderful counter example that reminded me of this important wisdom. Take a look at the Advance Auto Trends Inc. homepage.
Ok, now you’ve read it, including the statement ‘People don’t want to spend time figuring out what a business does, so our home page will highlight the most important features of both our business and our web site‘. Now can tell me what AAT Inc. actually does? And did you bother going to read another page trying to figure it out and seeing if you wanted to give them some money? Nope, I thought not.
Right, I’m off to edit my homepage now.
category: 
Technorati tags: none
Comments (2)
Comment from Avram Miller:
[May 21, 2006]
You are so right about my web site. But it was actually done in 1999 but a couple of 15 year old kids from Plugged In (www.pluggedin.org) where I was the chair for seven years.
I am about to redo it.
avram
Comment from pdinnen:
[May 21, 2006]
Thanks for commenting Avram. I think there are a couple of lessons here for me, but it’s too early on a Sunday morning for me to figure out exactly what they are.
A reminder that there’s no private remarks on the Internet and that snark doesn’t help anyone perhaps. Something about there being values more important than the bottom line too, the work of people like Plugged In being way more important than the ability to buy that new insert personal favourite consumer good here.