che Usability?

Way back in 2000, Nicolas Cage starred in a movie called Gone in Sixty Seconds. In the movie Cage and his crew needed to steal 50 exotic cars in just one night.

Think of web surfers as Nicolas Cage and his crew, breezing through homepages looking for the exotic cars to steal — except instead of 60 seconds your homepage only has 30 seconds to catch their interest.

It’s estimated that users with low web experience spend just 35 seconds on a homepage, while savvy web users spend as little as 25 seconds.

With only 30 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention, your messages need to be lean and to the point. You can’t afford to take up space with long, puffed up paragraphs. Realistically, you have to make your point with approximately 20 words. As users spend their time trying to figure out where to go next, they’re certainly not reading your content word-for-word.

The four most important things your homepage must communicate to your visitors are:

• What site is the person on
• What benefits your site offers
• Information about your company, latest products, or developments
• How to get to the most relevant sections.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Usability, Usability design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.