Jun 6, 2008 1 min read publishing

The Death of the Home Page

A few weeks back, the BBC published a report about Jakob Nielsen‘s latest findings about how web users operate. As Kristine pointed out, it had a dumb, dumb headline, but there were several real gems of information in there.

Here’s one every web editor and magazine publisher should study and think about:

> In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.

All that time you’re lavishing on your web site’s front page? Only a quarter of your visitors are using it. And that number is shrinking every day.

Every single page in your site is your home page. Start designing (and writing) for that fact.

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