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IA Summit 2011: Rethinking the Home Page
April 20th, 2011
Information Architects from around the world flocked to Denver this past month for the IA Summit 2011. Every presentation I attended – from content strategy, to usability testing, to an incredible keynote by statistics guru Nate Silver – was top-notch, and I came away with countless ideas for my own IA client work.
An e-commerce presentation by Eric Reiss of FatDUX stood out to me. I was particularly interested in his take on website Home Pages. In the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” style, Eric began by asking us which page in a website design do we (as IAs) discuss the most. Is it: (A) Gallery Pages (B) Forms (C) Home Page or (D) Proposed Budget? Everyone seemed to collectively agree the answer was (C), the Home Page.
According to Eric, that answer is actually wrong.
My boss and Director of Information Architecture, Kelley McDonald, is also concerned about the unnatural heavy-importance people place on the Home Page. He believes that deep content-pages are equally if not more important. He explains his theory in this short video: User Experience Design in the Google Era.
After listening to Eric, I had to ask: why do so many people focus on the Home Page? I have had multiple clients over the years spend numerous hours discussing what “lives” on the Home Page. Now, I can’t help but wonder if this is an effective use of time and budget.
According to both Kelley and Eric, the Home Page is not where users spend the majority of their time. In fact, users often go deeper into the site immediately via Google or another search engine, effectively surpassing the Home Page entirely.
Eric’s presentation at the IA Summit was the last “nail in the coffin for me.” From now on, I will be directing the client to focus much more on the “deep pages,” whether they are forms (e-Commerce) or deep-content (think WebMD).
Heather Hogue
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One Response 
There’s a great UIE Spoolcast featuring Hagan Rivers discussing why she tries to avoid starting projects with the home page — that what is on the home page is often determined by what’s underneath.
She explores navigation design based on the notion that navigation paths actually rarely start from the front door. People arrive elsewhere. Definitely a great conversation and one I refer to often at work with clients.
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/02/01/spoolcast-escaping-navigation-hell-with-hagan-rivers/
I think we all know that deep content and functionality are the most important to the users and this podcast does a great job of exploring the home page’s role and how to approach it in design.