As\u00a0digital marketers, we\u00a0cannot continue to build websites where form is emphasized before function. There needs to be some consistency\u00a0for the sake of user experience\u00a0and the success of a website.\u00a0On the web, Form Should Always Follow Function<\/strong>, unless you enjoy high bounce rates, low rankings, and a poor user experience.<\/p>\n On most websites the home page is often the most visited page. Other landing pages may collectively get more views and traffic. But the home page, when compared to all other individual landing pages on a\u00a0site, often has the most views. In this post, I’m going to discuss and show you 10 horrible home page mistakes that result in\u00a0poor user experiences, which in turn\u00a0will\u00a0lead to poor rankings in search engines.<\/p>\n Let’s begin:<\/p>\n Hick’s Law basically states that too many options increases the amount of time needed to make a decision. You don’t want users processing 20 different messages and graphics\u00a0on your client’s\u00a0home page. You want them processing one or two. Having less options\u00a0decreases the time it takes\u00a0the average human brain to\u00a0process the content on a\u00a0home page,\u00a0which will lead to lower bounce rates and higher page views.<\/p>\n [att_highlight color=”blue”]How Hick\u2019s Law Helped MySiteAuditor Increase Conversions by 25%<\/a>[\/att_highlight]<\/p>\n Sliders are for website owners, not for website users. When I ran The Ocean Agency for 10 years, we were constantly asked to add sliders to the home page of our client’s site. Why? So they could communicate more message, more messages, more messages!\u00a0Not only does this break Hick’s Law (above) but it’s been tested and\u00a0proven not to work.<\/p>\n Jacob Nielson of Nielson Norman Group<\/a>\u00a0did a study on the effectiveness of sliders.\u00a0He concluded that, “Accordions and carousels should show a new panel only when users ask for it.”<\/strong> The study also reviewed six\u00a0usability problems with accordions or moving carousels.<\/p>\n [att_highlight color=”blue”]Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility<\/a>[\/att_highlight]<\/p>\n [att_highlight color=”blue”]Don\u2019t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad<\/a>[\/att_highlight]<\/p>\n Unless you’re building Yahoo.com,\u00a0no one cares about news feeds on home pages<\/strong>. Sure, you\u00a0or your web design\u00a0client might care about “Danny Willerman’s” big promotion in their\u00a0accounting department, but visitors don’t care. Take that silly news feed off the\u00a0home page. Admit it, you only put it there because you saw other websites do it, and your trying to take up space. News flash, white space is good!\u00a0News feeds\u00a0just confuse visitors\u00a0with more messages, and take away form the\u00a0main message.<\/p>\n You did it. People are visiting your client’s\u00a0website, and most of them are landing on the\u00a0home page! Oh shit; now what? What’s the main thing you want visitors to do on the website. Unless the answer to that question is “leave” or “bounce”, I suggest you add a call-to-action. A\u00a0call-to-action should be the biggest button on the\u00a0home page, above the fold<\/strong>. It can even be a simple sign up form.<\/p>\n The manta or value proposition on a home page should be the h1 tag, and therefore, the biggest font\u00a0on the page. A study by the American Press Institute<\/a> found that the longer sentence, the less humans understood it. \u00a0Furthermore, the study concluded that\u00a0a sentence with\u00a0eight\u00a0words or less was 100% understood by their readers<\/strong>. In addition, never use all caps in a home page’s mantra statement. This article by UX Movement<\/a>\u00a0shows how humans read better if there is more shape contrast and color contrast.\u00a0Using all caps reduces the shapes of letters to blocks, therefore making it harder to read<\/strong> and understand. See for yourself. Practice reading the below three mantra statements.<\/p>\n Some really awesome home page mantras:<\/strong><\/p>\n If you doing a big SEO or PPC campaign, then people are going to find your website\u00a0right after they enter a keyword into a search engine. If it can naturally fit, I would recommend adding a target\u00a0keyword to the home page’s\u00a0mantra so users make\u00a0the instant connection<\/strong>\u00a0because they just searched that same keyword. Adding a target keyword will also help search engines\u00a0better understand who the\u00a0target market is<\/strong>;\u00a0therefore, helping your rankings, traffic, leads, and sale.<\/strong><\/p>\n A\u00a0home page can accidentally have duplicate pages, without the developer or website owner even knowing. This is horrible for SEO. Here’s an example of how this can happen.\u00a0YourDomain.com\/index.php\u00a0\u00a0and\u00a0YourDomain.com are actually different pages<\/strong> with the exact same content. Users would never see this, but in the eyes of major search engines, these are different and duplicate pages.<\/strong> Test it out. Instead, YourDomain.com\/index.php should redirect to YourDomain.com. If it doesn’t, you need to set up a preferred redirect.<\/p>\n The same goes for YourDomain.com\/index.html, YourDomain.com\/welcome.html and YourDomain.aspx. They all should redirect to YourDomain.com.<\/p>\n [att_highlight color=”blue”]How to Set Your Preferred Domain and Double the Power of Your Backlinks<\/a>\u00a0[\/att_highlight]<\/p>\n I’ve personally analyzed thousands of web pages and 99% of them name their logo file something like “logo.png” or “logo.jpg”. Hardly anyone optimizes their logo for SEO.<\/strong> This is where you can get a leg up on the competition.<\/p>\n [att_highlight color=”blue”]Logo Optimization: A Local SEO Stealth Tactic<\/a>\u00a0[\/att_highlight]<\/p>\n In this article from Conversion XL<\/a>, Peep Laja explains how important it is to use “high quality, large images”. \u00a0In a different\u00a0post on ConversionXL<\/a>, Laja also explains the importance of “Designing Your Website Flow To Meet Your Conversion Needs<\/a>“. Laja explains that you can do\u00a0by pointing arrows\u00a0to the CTA, or by having the person in your featured image look at the CTA.<\/p>\n Jacon Nielson of Nielson Norman Group, says, “A call center ad with a model in it on the phone may be a good picture technically, but it will more likely be ignored<\/a>“.<\/p>\n Giant Image Take aways:<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s official! In 2014 internet access through mobile phones officially surpassed internet access via desktop computers<\/a>. In addition, a study by comScore, Neustar Localeze, 15 Miles<\/a>\u00a0found that 78% of local-mobile searches resulted in an offline sale. The study also found that the top reason for a local search was “to find a specific\u00a0business”. This means that if \u00a0a local business’ home page is not optimized for local SEO, they’re going to have a some super frustrated customers.<\/p>\n Your home page can be your client’s\u00a0best friend or their\u00a0worst enemy. Agencies, you have no excuses. You need to follow these best practices for your customers. Remember, form should always follow function on the web. Emphasize user experience on your client’s\u00a0home pages over design. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time you design a new\u00a0home page\u00a0because according to Pablo Picasso,\u00a0“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let’s say you’re in the market to buy a brand new car. So, on Saturday morning you decide to\u00a0head down to local dealership to start test driving a few new models. \u00a0As you walk onto the dealership’s\u00a0lot you’re instantly greeted by an overly zealous salesman who shows\u00a0you the newest and hottest vehicle on the lot. […]","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":4398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":""},"categories":[5,34,3,4],"tags":[],"series":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/home-page-web-design-mistakes.png","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/itunes-cover.jpg","download_link":false,"player_link":false,"audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/feed\/podcast","embedCode":"1. Ignoring\u00a0Hicks Law<\/h2>\n
![\"Hicks](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/hicks-law.png\")
Too many options is not a good thing. It just creates more confusion. Trying to communicate every message to every person who might visit your website is a slap in the face to your core audience. Don’t sacrifice properly communicating to 90% of your target market so you can satisfy the other 10%.<\/strong><\/p>\n2. Using a Slider or Carousel<\/h2>\n
![\"slider\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/slider.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
3. Having a\u00a0News Feed<\/h2>\n
![\"News\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/news.png\")
<\/p>\n4. CTA is MIA<\/h2>\n
![\"CTA\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/cta.png\")
<\/p>\n5. A\u00a0Missing\u00a0Mantra<\/h2>\n
![\"mantra\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/mantra-value-propisition.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Mantra](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/mantra-statement.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
6. The Manta is Missing a Target Keyword<\/h2>\n
![\"Keywords\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/keywords.png\")
<\/p>\n7. No\u00a0Preferred Domain<\/h2>\n
8. The Logo is not Optimized<\/h2>\n
\n
9.\u00a0No Giant Image<\/h2>\n
\n
10. It’s Not Optimized for Local<\/h2>\n
![\"localseochecklist\"](\"https:\/\/mysiteauditor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/localseochecklist.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\nIf the website is for a local business, then make sure the\u00a0N<\/strong>ame A<\/strong>ddress and P<\/strong>hone number appear right at the top of your home page for mobile users. We don’t have time to navigate your site. We’re on the go and we need to find you!<\/li>\n
\nMake sure your hours are easily visible as well.<\/li>\n
\nMake sure your home page is optimized for keywords that use your city and state. For example, don’t target: “Organic pet store”. Instead target “Chicago organic pet store”.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFinal thoughts<\/h3>\n
10 Horrible Home Page Mistakes<\/a><\/blockquote>