On more than one occasion, I have asked clients what the main purpose of their homepage is and their response has been “to get the visitor interested in my site” which usually elicits a shudder from me. While generating interest is important, it shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all goal of a homepage. After all, while grabbing the visitor’s interest is fine, you still need to do something with it. The function of a homepage shouldn’t be just to provide a jazzy table of content for your site, nor is it to be a media explosion; the purpose of your homepage should be to appeal to your target personas and then to guide them to the appropriate path through your website.
Navigating the Forest of Your Website
One of the key elements of inbound marketing are personas, which are fictional representations of your target demographics. Your personas are the ones that you really want to help through your website, which means that the site itself needs to be constructed with them in mind. Now imagine that your website is a forest and each one of your personas needs to end up in a different spot on the other side of it. Without a proper path, those personas will wander around and have a much harder time getting to where they need to be. With the paths in place, it becomes pretty easy. The problem then becomes, how do the personas know which path to take?