As the page’s nickname indicates, your home page is extremely important to you.  Playing with an old Tony Bennett song about San Francisco, you want your sites visitors to leave their hearts there.  Okay, I’ll apologize for that.

Let’s settle one thing up front, though:  For most businesses the home page is not the most important.  Far from it.  That is probably the page that contains an “order now” button or a prospect lead form.  On the other hand, the home page is probably the page that will attract more first time traffic than any other page on your business site.

Your home will be the page to which more outside links point than any other of your pages.  Also, more than likely, your home page will be close to the top in terms of the number of internal links directed to it.  Should your visitors lose their way, due either to taking a wrong turn or due to poor design by your website’s architect, they probably will return to the home page to serve as their base of operations in order to launch another quest.

That simply means that your visitors will use your home page more than it might merit, although I took a circuitous route to get to that conclusion.  While they’re there, you might as well make good use of them and their time.

What are the purposes of a well constructed home page in an appropriately constructed Internet business site?  Here are a few functions from which you can choose, although never try to use one page to do everything.

*  Provide a corporate office atrium to set the mood for your business’ corporate climate–laid back and informal, or efficient and orderly or however else you position the company.

*  Allow the visitors to locate where they want to go without any unnecessary distractions.  Your navigation menu will serve this function on all of your pages, but on the home page you may want to help with making suggestions concerning the most efficient ways in which they might proceed.

*  Subtly and efficiently communicate the mission of your business through the copy on the page, the images, a video or some combination of all channels.

*  Be explicit in explaining to your visitors what you want them to do.  Don’t make them guess!  You might want them to buy a product, sign up to receive valuable information, learn about the topic in which your business is the expert or even all of those.

*  Make a favorable first impression by picking up the clutter; create an attractive but unpretentious space.

Those are some of the things to keep in mind for your home page, regardless of whether you already have a large, established, authority website or you hope to construct a small site for a business.

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