Site Review - simplify home page layout to help visitors find next steps

By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Sep 15, 2006

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Mike, the owner of www.jobsitejoe.com, attracted 230 visitors to his website that matches landscape contractors with customers in a local area. Mike asked for feedback about his website home page.

Regarding the website itself, I'd recommend simplifying your home page layout. Your site is new and most visitors have no experience using your site. You need to quickly - within 5 to 8 seconds - communicate what your site is and what someone can do there.

You have at least 8 major screen elements above the fold (on 1024 x 768 resolution) competing for visitor's attention. I only see two that are really important though, the rest are just visual distraction, or "detraction" as I call it.

Many new website designers feel like they need to fill every square inch of space on a page, but this is a mistake because it dilutes the value of those one or two key elements on the page. A few design changes I recommend:

• Since every Windows PC displays the current system time in the lower right corner of the display, there is no need for you to show people what time it is on your website - eliminate the clock on your home page.
  
• Your customers are in your local neighborhood, they can look outside and see that it's sunny or rainy. They don't need to see weather conditions on your website (www.weather.com and numerous other sites have this wrapped up). Get rid of the weather box.
  
• Is the Weather Channel providing a link to your website on their home page? If not, then get rid of the link to theirs on yours.
  
• Traffic? Your visitors probably aren't coming to your site to check traffic, nor will they likely consider your site the source for local traffic when they do need that info. Drop the traffic links.

With those changes we've eliminated your entire right sidebar. Now you have room to add white space to your home page. Let's tackle that now.

You're trying to sell a new concept to visitors who have never heard of your site. I have to scroll to the middle of the page to read your intro to the service. Even after reading the intro, it's still not clear what the site offers. You've done a good job at segmenting the main content area for your two audience groups, but a poor job at quickly communicating what the site offers.

First, move your intro to the top of the page and reword it a bit. I like the two column layout, but I would use much smaller accent photos to allow more white space for your headlines. Possible column headlines:

"Hampton Roads,VA Homeowners - Hire a local home and garden contractor. Submit your job and get estimates from up to 3 local professionals in 48 hours. Submit a job."

"Contractors - Provide estimates to local homeowners. Register Now. View Jobs."

What do you want people to do? Provide links to the actions you want people to take. Use language that clearly communicates what action lies behind the link.

There are a couple of changes I would advise that you make immediately to prevent backlash:

• Do not show consumer's phone numbers to site visitors who (a) are not logged on and (b) are not registered as a local pro
  
• Rather than show the person's email address, provide an email form that registered users can use to send email to the other party. This provides additional privacy for your users and with the proper tracking code, you can see how often people are making contact. A site that shows a good example of this is http://www.thenannyjobsite.com/nanny-resume2012.html
  
• Allow people to designate a contact preference, including preferred method and time of day

Jumping back to the layout and white space topic, two more thoughts:

• Consider removing all of the "Major Advertiser Here" placeholders you have. Replace them with ONE simple text link like "Advertising Information."
  
• Make it easy for returning customers to login and check their account. Place a logon form on the home page. See the nanny site above for an example of that too.

Finally, my last piece of advice, based solely on my preferences, is to try a white background instead of black. The site will look cleaner and more inviting with a simple white background. 

Two sites that do a good job at communicating their purpose using text, minimal graphics and ample white space are:

http://www.tickspot.com/

http://www.freshbooks.com

Study sites like those and then read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789723107/002-6943961-7516 854?v=glance&n=283155). You'll walk away motivated to improve your website and your customers will thank you for it.