Is There a Tension Between A Link-Rich Home Page and A Home Page that Looks Good?
I’m betting you didn’t notice that VeritasIdeas.com had a major relaunch of their home page. Why would you? Unless you’re an architect or interior designer of commercial office space, you’d have little reason to be on the site.
But, I’m paid to notice these things and I did notice their new home page. I think it’s a great step in the right direction.
Click to see the new VeritasIdeas.com home page.
The new page brings more of the site out to the surface. They’ve done a nice job of letting users know they can create their own samples without having to talk to a salesperson.
In fact, I think it’s a huge improvement over their old home page:
Click to see the old VeritasIdeas.com home page.
The new page retains the old page’s classy design aesthetic, while making more of the content on the site available.
But, I’m wondering if the designers went far enough. After all, if we look at the site map, we can plainly see the site has a lot more to offer.
Click to see the VeritasIdeas.com site map.
For example, the user still has to know there are featured designers highlighted on the site or that they can create special orders with their own interlayer material and resin properties. This is important content on the site, but users are unaware it’s available without clicking through everything.
Of course, to make this happen, the designers would have to add more links to the home page. And more links might take away from the aesthetic classiness of the site.
In fact, I got this exact question when I talked about the old VeritasIdeas.com home page design during my UIE Virtual Seminar a few weeks ago:
How do you balance providing lots of links and style? The Veritas page is sexy but the site map is boring. How do you balance the two?
I also was sent these questions during the seminar, so this is a common thought people have:
How do you balance providing enough content with creating a clean and attractive design?
What are some techniques to determine how to strike a balance between link rich home pages and a visually appealing site? How do you determine which links should be on the home page and which should be left off?
and this particularly interesting one:
Some people walked out of this session saying that link richness simply ruins design. One said our home page design provides a sense of place and welcome that an unwieldy bunch of links simply can’t convey. Do you have any suggestions for how to get folks to consider the value of link rich home pages (without drop down menus)?
The question becomes, is an “unwieldy bunch of links” the only way to move all that value onto the home page? Certainly, it’s an option, but is it the only one? I think that both the Analog Devices home page and the New York Times home page have a large number of links (close to 200 each) without being unwieldy.
Of course, it takes more work and probably more talent to make a link rich design look good than it takes to make a link-poor design look classy. I wonder if the people walking out of the room are just afraid of the challenge.
I don’t think there needs to be a tension between making a page contain all the useful information it needs to contain and having that page be aesthetically delightful. On the contrary, I think that’s the ideal goal to achieve.