January 2008 Newsletter

Issued on Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Welcome To The January 2008 Edition Of The CommArt Newsletter

In this edition we will discuss the Home Page:

• Why is it important?
• How to get it right
• Search engine optimisation
• Hard work

The Importance of the Home Page

Without a doubt the home page is the single most important page of a web site. As there are millions of web sites in the world, visitors to a web site arrive in several main ways:

• Search engine
• Advertising referral
• Personal referral

The good news is that most, if not all, visitors to your site are already interested in the products you are selling - assuming the web site conveys your product marketing message well.

Search engine: the home page is the main link between search engines and the content of a web site. Its importance is best described as a portal to a web site.

Advertising referral: the home page is the prime address that is used in advertising to direct visitors to an organisation's web site.

Personal referral: the home page is the prime address people use to advise friends and associates of an organisation's web site.

So, as a new visitor to a web site, the home page has to capture the attention of the visitor and convince them to continue browsing the site.

How To Get The Home Page Right

The home page must convey the organisation's product marketing message in a direct manner - it can not be superficial as this will frustrate the visitor and they WILL go to another site (time is precious). The home page has to "cut to the chase" quickly and succinctly. The rest of the web site can go into detail as required.

The product marketing message must not discuss features of the product line - it must discuss benefits to the customers. Customers are only interested in benefits to them. Without benefits, the customer is unable to see value in your product line and will go elsewhere.

Search Engine Optimisation

Customers must note that search engine indexing robots ONLY see plain text (not text in images). So it is important that the text on your home page is meaningful to visitors and search engines (usually the same).

Do not get misled by enthusiastic claims of having animations or fancy graphics on a home page - unless you are directing a lot of visitors to your web site by methods other than search engines then the fancy graphics or animations will no have a benefit. Nothing replaces good design for a web site (structural and visual). CommArt's graphic design team has the expertise to assit in these matters.

A particularly successful method of keeping your site in search engine indexes is to put a "Latest News" or similar such section on the home page. Some of our clients have taken to such method and apart from the obvious changes being notified to the search engines it also if helpful mechanism for the site owner to communicate to visitors on a semi-regular basis - particularly for a site that does not have a regular newsletter system in place.

Hard Work That Will Reward

Thinking from the point of view of a customer is often counter intuitive to the normal day to day thought processes in an organisation. It is not easy to think like a customer, the processes required to develop a home page is hard work - there are no quick fixes. CommArt is able to provide consultant services to assist customers in authoring their home page. These services are part of CommArt's professional web site development service.

Once the hard work is done and the home page has been published, new visitors and possibly previous visitors will appreciate the professionally written home page. The visitors will be more inclined to visit other areas of the web as they will be able to get a grasp of what the site is trying to convey from the outset.

Contact the Web Site Development Team if you want assistance in writing your home page. We are more than happy to assist customers in writing other pages in their web site to gain maximum attention from visitors.