While your business’ website surely has more tasteful content than what you’d find in the tabloids at the checkout line, there is something to be learned from their covers.
Magazine covers aren’t meant to tell the whole story, they’re meant to pique your interest enough that you part with $4.99 to read the contents.
When planning out your website – particularly the home page – take some cues from the magazines:
- Pay attention to hierarchy and organize the most important information in places of prominence. They eye moves from the upper left corner of the screen to the lower right (one reason the company logo is in the top left corner on most sites). This visual path will help you configure your page.
- Use punchy lines of text with small blurbs that link to the interior content pages of your site.
- Keep as much information on the home page “above the fold” as possible (okay, this is newspaper-speak, but still works here). In other words, you don’t want to lose any critical bits off of the bottom of the screen.
- Above all, keep the home page layout simple – engaging, but simple. A magazine cover can’t hold all of its interior content, and neither can your home page!
Please, take one: I just wrote a short article called “5 Things Your Small Business Website Needs to Engage Your Customers“.
