Why Have a Good Homepage?

Your homepage is the most important page on your site. It's a welcome mat and an overview of what a visitor might find once they are there. A good homepage encourages visitors to click around your site.

Here are Some Tips and Tricks for a Kickin' Homepage:

1.) Rename your Homepage

When you started your Wetpaint site, the first page was automatically titled "Home." Renaming your homepage makes it easier for others to find you on the net. You can rename your homepage by accessing the Moderator Toolset menu in the Page Toolbox and selecting "Rename."

The right page name will help search engines like Google and Yahoo find your site. Use two to three specific words to describe your site, such as:

a. “Scottish Highland Dancing,” not “Home.”

Wrong Way:

Right way:

2.) Welcome Your Visitors Wetpaint has a site greeting feature that let's you automatically welcome others the first time they come to your site. This greeting can only be seen by people who are not logged in. Example of Site Greeting: Learn how to personalize your site's greeting. Be sure to write your home page in a warm and inviting tone that makes your site sound down to earth and easy to use. Also, as a site creator, you can send an automatic message to new members welcoming them to the site. Learn how to send a new member message.

3.) Use Headers and Subheaders to Break Up the Page

Homepages should be easy to read, so use headers and sub-headers to define sections of the page.

Example of Headers:

4.) State Your Site's Purpose From your homepage alone, a new visitor should be able to gather what the site is about and why they may be interested in getting involved. Example of Stating Site Purpose: Site Tip: Be sure you are clear on your homepage that this is an open content site and community, and that their involvement is welcome and strongly encouraged.

5.) Point Users to Important Pages

You should mention your most important and most popular pages on the homepage and include internal links for all of them. This will help new visitors understand the value of your site and helps repeat visitors dive in and navigate the site much easier. Not everyone uses the navigation menu on the left side of the page!


Site Tip: On the internal links, use text that explains where the site is linking to.
For example, if you are linking to a page about dog leashes, use something like "Read more about dog leashes," instead of "click here," or "see more."

Users quickly scan pages looking for words or topics to pop out at them, and linking with more specific text will help them while they are scanning. Plus search engines treat the text in the link as an indicator of what the page is about.

6.) Calls to Action Calls to action are statements that tell your members what you want them to do on your site. Example of Calls to Action: "Fill out Fan Pages" and "Help fill out their bio page" are good examples of Calls to Action. "Add photos," "add polls" or "add videos" are also good Calls to Action. Site Tip: One of the very best calls to action you can give a wiki is "Join this site!" to encourage people to sign up. Writing in a manner that coaxes others to participate immediately will help them to do just that.

7.) Update Your Home Page

If you establish a pattern of changing your homepage, users will come back to check your site more often. On the other hand, if visitors check your site and your homepage is continuously the same, they will come to your site less often. The homepage is a good way to tell your community and visitors what is new on your site.

Site Tip: An easy way to update your homepage is to have a regularly changing feature, such as a news update or monthly contest announcements. Also, featuring different pages from week to week is a good idea. When users visit the site and see these updates, it sends the impression that this is an active site and community.

8.) Lock the Home Page Since the homepage is so important to your site, you may wish to lock the page and prevent general and anonymous users from changing it. This will also prevent the homepage from being vandalized.

9.) Keep your home page text short.

Long homepages are overwhelming; make your home page less than 2 screens long.
Example: