Comments | Main >
Home Page or Secondary Page?
| 1.31.2006
Almost every designer I know, when designing a website, starts with the home page first. I think this happens for a few reasons. The first is that it's usually the easiest page to design. After all, it is a home page and the first page people see when they hit a site. It needs to quickly and elegantly (at least the good sites) articulate the brand voice and personality. Ideally, a home page shouldn't have too much information on it. The few staples include a larger picture, navigation and a mission statement or tagline. Add some news and a free offer and you're half way home. It's there to set the tone and funnel you to the content you came looking for in the first place. Any good designer can bang out a 2-3 home pages in a day. The second reason is that it's usually the page that the client wants to see during a first round review. It's exciting for them to see the brand come alive within an online touch point in all its glory. I don't think they would have the same level of excitement if they were shown a tertiary level page with a feedback form. Once a client picks a particular direction, that style is applied to lower level pages.
From a creative point of view, it's the lower level pages that are the hardest to design. Designing a template that can house tons of content, buttons, pictures and forms in an elegant and intuitive way, is a hard working template and not an easy one to create. Usually, we're trying to imagine how what we're creating for the home page, will work on the lower level pages. Sometimes it never works and the design is quickly changed or abandoned. On the next few project, I'm going to try and get the time to design the lower level pages first and work my way up to the home page. It's going to be interesting to see how the design changes when going the opposite way.
On Silver Sky, an assisted living community, the home page came together relativly quickly. As mentioned above, it's mostly brand area with some quick calls to action. Believe it or not, the lower level pages were a bit more challenging. Even when I look back on them, they look suspiciously simple, but that's one the hardest challenges of good design - making boring or overly complicated pages look approachable, easy to navigate and simple.
I showed this site to my parents the other day and they thought I was hinting at putting them away. I think I'm out of their will at this point, but I'll work on them at the super bowl party.
posted at 9:15 PM
|
Hoverblog Archives August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 September 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 Latest Links Myallo - Uses an “interest profile” to find the most interesting Web pages on the Internet, and can actually learn over time. Acquisition - Probably the slickest P2P file sharing application on the web. Beautiful and intuitive OSX-like interface. iPod Music Liberator-Great little shareware for copying music directly from your ipod into ITunes and your finder...No Stealing Bad Music! MusicPublisher - For those of us who are not content just sharing the songs within ITunes, this little app lets you also share any iPod you have docked to your computer as well.
Some Favorite Sites Stuff I Want Contact Hoverblog is |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
2 Comments:
Very funny! But one thing IS true. You ARE out of the will. And you are uninvited to the SuperBowl party. Now, that's FUNNY! Don't you think so? Dad, with Love.
how true. how true. good insight!
Post a Comment