A lot of experts and overpaid consultants love to espouse that a site design has approximately
6 seconds to engage and captivate readers. If they cannot figure out who you are
or what you do in the span of a few heartbeats, it??™s back to Google and off to a competitor.
This 6-second rule is not set in stone??”and is difficult to quantify with any research??”
but it does serve as a nagging reminder that the global attention span is short, distracted,
and terribly impatient.
The reality is that you have longer than 6 seconds if you can buy yourself time. By giving
the reader a tangible hook about the company, a homepage can draw the person in and
persuade them to learn more by offering more detailed content. If all goes well and the
design is successful, the corporation is rewarded with a click into the site. And driving traffic
to the interior of the site is really the whole point.
In this chapter, I??™ll cover what makes a homepage design successful: what content should
be included, what content the reader wants to see, how to make a good impression fast,
design elements to avoid (splash pages, anyone?), and getting the user to make that critical
first click.
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