That adds 70 kilobytes to the home page. And we haven't even taken into account the text and other graphics on the page! Admittedly, such sites are rare. But sites with half a dozen buttons are quite common; Increases Page Noise: Animated buttons catch the attention of the eye. But when you have multiple brightly colored, quick flashing, animated buttons displayed next to each other, all the movement adds to the page noise. This will tire the user's eyes and annoy the user; and
Decreases the Effectiveness of Other Ads: Web users have become accustomed to ignoring ad banners. It would be fair to say that users are even more likely to ignore half a dozen brightly colored, quick flashing, animated ad buttons placed next to each other. As a result, all your advertising click-through rates are likely to suffer.I recommend that you don't display any animated ad buttons on your home page. But if you have to, I suggest you only display one or two ad buttons at the very most. Also make sure the graphics are optimized and don't add too much noise to the page.
Too Much Content
Some Web designers try to cram in as much content as they can fit into a home page. I recommend that you don't try to promote every single item your Web site has to offer on your home page.
It is much more effective to promote your latest or most popular five or six offers and features, than all one hundred and twenty. The home page shouldn't take up more than two to three visible pages.
Four reasons why you shouldn't cram too much content onto your home page:
Takes Longer to Download: Eight seconds is all the time that most Web users will wait before they give up on a site. The more content you add to your home page, the longer it will take to download;
Decreases Readability: People are put off by huge amounts of text. Lots of text and graphics also requires the user's mind to work hard to filter out the useful content from the junk. People are much more likely to read two paragraphs than twenty; Too Many Options: Don't make your visitors work by putting too many options on a page. Web surfing should be enjoyable, not hard work! ICQ.com's old home page made that mistake. It had over 300 links and buttons! That's far too many options; and Requires Too Much Scrolling: Web users typically don't like to scroll too much. Since most Web users select the first reasonable option, or link, the content towards the bottom of a long page is hardly ever going to be viewed. As such, that part of the page is a waste of time downloading.
Go Away Links
The main objective of the home page is to entice the visitor to explore the site further. So links that lead visitors to other Web sites only encourages them to go away! You don't REALLY want your visitors to leave your site, do you?
Try to minimize the following go away links on your home page:
Advertising banners, buttons, and text links;
Affiliate program banners, buttons, and text links (unless your income depends on them!);
Decreases the Effectiveness of Other Ads: Web users have become accustomed to ignoring ad banners. It would be fair to say that users are even more likely to ignore half a dozen brightly colored, quick flashing, animated ad buttons placed next to each other. As a result, all your advertising click-through rates are likely to suffer.I recommend that you don't display any animated ad buttons on your home page. But if you have to, I suggest you only display one or two ad buttons at the very most. Also make sure the graphics are optimized and don't add too much noise to the page.
Too Much Content
Some Web designers try to cram in as much content as they can fit into a home page. I recommend that you don't try to promote every single item your Web site has to offer on your home page.
It is much more effective to promote your latest or most popular five or six offers and features, than all one hundred and twenty. The home page shouldn't take up more than two to three visible pages.
Four reasons why you shouldn't cram too much content onto your home page:
Takes Longer to Download: Eight seconds is all the time that most Web users will wait before they give up on a site. The more content you add to your home page, the longer it will take to download;
Decreases Readability: People are put off by huge amounts of text. Lots of text and graphics also requires the user's mind to work hard to filter out the useful content from the junk. People are much more likely to read two paragraphs than twenty; Too Many Options: Don't make your visitors work by putting too many options on a page. Web surfing should be enjoyable, not hard work! ICQ.com's old home page made that mistake. It had over 300 links and buttons! That's far too many options; and Requires Too Much Scrolling: Web users typically don't like to scroll too much. Since most Web users select the first reasonable option, or link, the content towards the bottom of a long page is hardly ever going to be viewed. As such, that part of the page is a waste of time downloading.
Go Away Links
The main objective of the home page is to entice the visitor to explore the site further. So links that lead visitors to other Web sites only encourages them to go away! You don't REALLY want your visitors to leave your site, do you?
Try to minimize the following go away links on your home page:
Advertising banners, buttons, and text links;
Affiliate program banners, buttons, and text links (unless your income depends on them!);
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