Kelly Mason

This last week, while in a meeting about how we can design our homepage so that it is more usable, our CEO Pete Gombert said something totally blew my mind:  "Do we really need a homepage?"

Let me take you back a few weeks.  I've been gathering feedback from various different sources, and then reviewing and compiling that feedback with one goal:  To come up with a more usable, relevant homepage for our users.  So to hear that statement as I was wrapping up my quest made me feel...dizzy.  You know the feeling when you think you've thought of everything and then you're hit upside the head with something - simple.  

But it got me thinking - what is the function of the homepage?  I set out to look at some other homepages for inspiration.

Is it a place to promote yourself and others?  All I can say is, I hope not.  Although for some sites, that seems to be the case.  I think of www.evite.com.  'Evite' became a common noun overnight, like, "Did you get my evite?" and I just received an evite for a moving party, like bring your trucks and your tie-downs, which isn't a party at all, so the uses for this site are broadening. 
The first time I came to the site I was expecting a site that your grandmother could use, based on some of the not-so-technically-savvy people who had sent me evites.  But unfortunately, it was hard to tell the difference between the basic evite function, and the many ads on their site.  It was hard to tell what would walk me through the process, and what would open a new tab and shoot me off to some other site I didn't want in the first place. 
Even on our own ad builder software homepage, it seems that we took up a lot of space promoting the client - but why? One user told me in their feedback that they didn't understand why the brand was trying to advertise to their own franchisees.   They were already sold on the brand - now they just need local marketing ideas in order to promote it to the consumer!

Well maybe, then, the homepage is a way to direct and guide users in the path they should take.  This is the premise I have been going on.  As the experts in local media buying, and the creators of this ad builder software, it is our job to guide and direct users in their local advertising.  But the question is, if we already know where they should go, why not just take them there? 
Take a look at the music site Grooveshark.  The homepage is one big search box.  You can see there are other functions along the left-hand side, but rather than selecting an option that says Search for Songs, or Start my Playlist, it just gives me a search box.  I know what to do with that.
It goes without saying that building a campaign using ad builder software is quite a bit more complicated than building a playlist of songs, however, there is something to be said for that kind of simplicity, and for removing unnecessary steps for our users so that they can reach their goal more quickly.  

The answer to my previous question may be in the name itself - homepage.  Whether you go with a traditional homepage or the un-homepage homepage, users like the idea of getting back where they started.  Whether they get there via a Go Home link or the repetitive back button - it's a comfort zone and users don't have to commit to any decision, because they can always go back.

My lesson was this:  we have been thinking too traditionally when it comes to a homepage.  We thought of the homepage as the place where all 'important' functions should live.  So anytime we built something new and it was deemed important, we wanted to shove it onto the homepage, thinking that that's they way we would ensure users wouldn't miss it.  Well, they do. 
What we should really be thinking about is how can we guide our users so that they have the best chance of meeting their local store marketing goals.  No two sites are exactly alike, and no one knows how to get the most out of our ad builder software like we do, so why not pass a little of that along to our users?

Stay tuned to see a new and improved homepage!