11 Untitled

This article made me realise that I have never once catered for the return visitor. Never ever. Looks like I have some work to do.

I blogged this article over at www.thewebdesignblog.com

posted at 01:48 pm on January 31, 2006 by Cheyne Winterton

12 Great Ideas

Thanks a lot for this one Derek, it’s nice to introduce a new idea (to me) like start with site design from somewhere besides the home page. It’s such a simple and brilliant concept.

I’ve already applied the idea clearly stating the website’s purpose on the home page on a new project of mine, and it’s wonderful.

One silly critique: “Logged out” is not the opposite of “logged in. I like “not logged in” better. Logged out is what happens when you fire a logout action.

posted at 05:20 pm on January 31, 2006 by Justin Perkins

13 Another Reason

Kudos, and thanks for these words well-spent. Another reason to pay close attention to our inner pages is that they are likely to BE our first impression (vs. the “home page”) when a first-time visitor arrives via a link from a search engine, or a repeat visitor comes in via an RSS feed. Site-wide branding and a prominent link to the home/about-us page helps, too. Back-door, side-door, and bathroom-window visitors all deserve our respect, and our gracious welcome.

posted at 07:14 pm on January 31, 2006 by Trace Meek

14 Thanks, just cleared up things in my mind

Leaving the creation of the front page at the end of the process really makes sense to me now.

Otherwise you can easily get those kinds of text …

posted at 08:01 pm on January 31, 2006 by Nikolay Spassov

15 Designing Inside Out and Side by Side

Thanks for the great article. It was easy to read and digest and is an excellent reminder of good design practices.

I appreciate the idea of designing from the inside out — from a key interior page back up through to the home page.

I often design side-by-side, working on a key inside page at the same time as the home page. This enables me to focus on the usability of the inner page (such as a product page detail or a news article), while making sure to emphasize the stronger flavor/brand that the home page presents.

posted at 01:43 am on February 1, 2006 by Susan Snipes

16 Great Article

Thanks for the reminder, Derek.

posted at 10:31 am on February 1, 2006 by Rachel James

17 "I told you so"

In the last web project I managed, I asked the designer to first work on the inner pages and then do the homepage. Since she is an expert designer she refused, saying “I don’t work like that. The homepage sets the tone of the website”. I was right of course. The inner pages were designed as an afterthought and look it.

Now I have two options, to send her the link or not to. Well, saying “I told you so” is not very helpful. I will probably demand it the next time while showing the designer this great article.

posted at 05:06 pm on February 1, 2006 by Hanan Cohen

18 Untitled

Her is another interesting story look at what what just happend to Cindy Sheehan.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183392,00.html

posted at 01:00 am on February 2, 2006 by luther Jensen

19 not first, but not last either

I agree with a lot of what Derek has written here, except that I find that its usually impossible to design the homepage absolutely last. Rather, as others have suggested, the homepage develops iteratively as you design the inner layers of the site.

I have found that clients generally can’t cope with waiting so long for the homepage, and often can’t or won’t approve other design without seeing how it would work with the homepage context. This doesn’t necessarily make for the best possible process, but it seems to be the way to achieve the best result most efficiently.

I can’t agree more with the philosophy of starting with the page at the deepest layer – too often these are left way to late, resulting in poor design and even worse information architecture.

posted at 09:13 am on February 2, 2006 by leisa reichelt

20 give the people what they want

An alternative to displaying the newest content in a prime spot on your home page is to give users what they want most. What are they coming to your site for? What’s the most popular section of the site? For example, on a site I worked on, most of our traffic went to the discounts section. Rather than frustrate users by hiding this two levels down, we redesigned the site and made discounts a prominent link on the home page. This proved very successful – it was user-oriented design.

However, this change generated some internal debate – shouldn’t the site reflect the organization’s priorities versus what users wanted to see? It’s an interesting debate and really depends on the site’s mission and audience. Is your internal audience more important than your external one? Your internal audience is right down the hall compared to your users which are more of an unseen mass. Obviously, a site’s users are the most important but that can be a tough sell with the people who sign the checks ;)

On sites I’ve worked on the criteria for the “what goes on the home page” question usually ends up being a compromise between internal and external audiences. There are certain things that we want people to know about (our new CEO) versus what they’re coming to our site about (the free stuff). It’s important to have some sort of “defensible criteria” for what goes on the home page so that the page doesn’t get cluttered up with everyone’s links and buttons.

Really useful article.

posted at 06:10 pm on February 2, 2006 by Joe Flood