Content on the front page

McKnight · #1 (**permalink**) 08-22-2009, 02:58 PM

Got another interesting thing we can talk about guys.

What do you think is the best front page content for a website that is related to explaining stuff to people through tutorials. Here are the 3 options I was thinking about:

OPTION #1 - Introduction page explaining what kind of website it is and what people can find on it

OPTION #2 - A small and simple website blog where the author would write updates about site development, new articles, new tutorials, new videos.

OPTION #3 - Set it up so that the newest article is at the top of the front page and under that article a few more older articles. Something like "featured articles" or tutorial.

Give me your opinion about the options and which one you think I should choose or add an option yourself.

sgtmac66 · #2 (**permalink**) 08-22-2009, 09:09 PM

Your talking about two different things...a website and a blog.

Option 1 is standard fare for a website home page.

You need to make it clear right off the bat, what the site is about and what people can find on it. The average viewer takes 3-5 seconds, to make up his/her mind, if they want to stick around.

McKnight · #3 (**permalink**) 08-23-2009, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgtmac66

Your talking about two different things...a website and a blog.

It's going to a website first and a blog second. More website than a blog. The blog is just going to be for writing updates on the websites development, nothing big just a news board with comments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgtmac66

The average viewer takes 3-5 seconds, to make up his/her mind, if they want to stick around.

This is amazing advice. I didn't think of that and you just reminded me of that. I'm going the "What's this website about" description stand at the top.

hthought · #4 (**permalink**) 08-23-2009, 01:45 PM

Yes, it is exactly about what the first impressions mean to you. Make sure that people can easily understand what your website is all about and then also make sure that you provide them with lots of possible roads via your index webpage.

That is, provide them with featured articles and stuff that will enable them to find more info and choose what to read from.

McKnight · #5 (**permalink**) 08-23-2009, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hthought

That is, provide them with featured articles and stuff that will enable them to find more info and choose what to read from.

That's exactly what I started to implement. Featured articles. I wasn't sure to put it or not, thought it might be nice and now you've encouraged me to go the right way, thanks!

I was thinking of making a article slideshow and put a few article snippets in the slideshow. That would be "featured articles". Sounds good to you?

Anything else I should pay attention to?

hthought · #6 (**permalink**) 08-24-2009, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by McKnight

That's exactly what I started to implement. Featured articles. I wasn't sure to put it or not, thought it might be nice and now you've encouraged me to go the right way, thanks!

I was thinking of making a article slideshow and put a few article snippets in the slideshow. That would be "featured articles". Sounds good to you?

Anything else I should pay attention to?

Yes, a slideshow can be a very nice idea. Just make sure that you do not harass the user much. Present it in a nice manner that does not annoy him.

Another nice attention catcher is images. It is a nice idea to use some attractive images in the front of your page, or maybe as a descriptive image on each of your posts.

There are many imporant things that you can do to catch attention. I would really suggest that you take a look at copyblogger.net in order to learn more about copywriting and stuff.

McKnight · #7 (**permalink**) 08-25-2009, 03:11 AM

I never got a chance to look at that blog, seems to be quite popular. I'll take a look.

Front page designing seems to be a lot easy on blogs than on websites since the blogs front page is constantly updated with text at least but on website it's static forever.

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