Design your content and design it well

Design your content and design it well

Stuart Horton-Stephens | 17/09/2010

One of the most common myths in today’s generation of web designers and developers is the fact that the Homepage of a website is the most important, therefore should be catered for accordingly. However, recent statistics reveal quite the opposite.

Statistics from Gerry McGovern confirm the decline of the homepage: “In 2003, 39 percent of the page views for a large research website were for the homepage. By 2009, it was down to 19 percent. In one month in 2008, of the 70,000 page views a technology site received, 22,000 were for the homepage. For the same month in 2010, of the 120,000 page views the site received, only 2,500 were for the homepage. Another technology website had roughly 10 percent of page views for the homepage in 2008, and by 2010 it was down to 5 percent. One of the largest websites in the world had 25 percent of visitors come to the homepage in 2005, but in 2010 only has 10 percent.”

 So, it seems like more and more ‘customers’ are going straight to specific pages on your website rather than starting at the homepage. Why is this so?...I thought i heard you ask... Well, the reason is that people are now becoming alot more savvy in the ways of searching online. For instance, instead of using ‘Couch’ as a search term in google then trawling through sites to find the right one for you, users are now entering keywords such as “ Cheap couch on sale in Inner West Sydney’, which will then display internal pages, directing the user to a specific page.

So next time you are about to embark on (yet) another web project, allocate reasonable time and effort to designing and creating user friendly and ‘smart’ internal pages, because believe it or not (and i suggest you may as well..see above points) users are more than likely to start at your site on an internal page then make their way to the homepage.

tags: Web Design ,  Online Trends