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What should you be thinking? Simple: "I have 5 seconds of this guy's time." ... and then only if you're lucky. Once you realize that, everything else follow
by jasonkester 16y ago
What should you be thinking? Simple:
"I have 5 seconds of this guy's time."
... and then only if you're lucky. Once you realize that, everything else follows easily. Your first goal is to answer "what does this website do" in six words and stick that message in a place the user can't miss.
Next up is a clear call to action. A "Solve My Problem Now" button that takes up a third of the screen and can't be missed or mistaken.
Then you have 3 other elements to play with (At a maximum, a user will be able to process 5 things about a page, and you've already used up two). I'd go for a couple bullet points explaining benefits (not features), and some form of graphic showing that benefit happening in a spectacular way.
And that's it. That's all you get above the fold. Feel free to add more stuff, but make it low key and below the fold. The 4% of your visitors who are still around and curious can read it, but the rest will have bounced or clicked the signup button already. The facebook/twitter stuff you mention goes all the way down in the footer.
Examples (my own):
http://www.fairtutor.com/ http://www.fairtutor.com/
http://www.twiddla.com/ http://www.twiddla.com/
Visit each one for 5 seconds, then come back here and see if you can remember what they do. If you can't, I've failed. If you can, I've probably still failed. But if you get stuck and click the "Go" button, I win.
- access_denied 16y agoExcellent. Can't support it enough. One minor caveat: you can do all this right and yet completely destroy it with a messed up layout (aka graphic design). The layout has 2 functions: 1) make the points of the Parent 'work (readability and such) 2) instill trust in your business (first impression by well done design)
- loewenskind 16y agoYour Spanish teaching thing is really cool. Can you do one for French? There are some countries in Africa where you can probably take advantage of similar wage differences.
- loewenskind 16y agoOne nit though: I had to go through a few links before I found out if it had voice or not. I don't believe in learning by reading (how old were you when you learned to read your native language?) and all I saw on the first page was text. Maybe I should have assumed it would have voice but so many people are hung up on learning a language from reading that that's never a good assumption to make.
- jasonkester 16y agoThanks for that. I'll try to cram that onto the homepage someplace. If it's not obvious to you, it won't be to anybody else.
- loewenskind 16y agoYea, that's why I decided to mention it. I think it's a great idea and really important for learning a language.
- jasonkester 16y agoFrench might well be the next vertical. The plan for now though is to focus on just doing one thing really well. There are plenty of sites that have poured lots of money into doing online tutoring in the general case, and there are plenty of smaller sites that do online Spanish tutoring acceptably. But everybody with funding has thus far gone the way of being generic, so there's a gap waiting for a really good site doing just Spanish. At some point, we'll outgrow it (hopefully), and "French by Moroccans and Guyanans" might be the next one.
- honopu 16y agoGreat info. I have noticed this set of graphics on various websites, not necessarily the same characters, but it has the same general style. Are these available as a set somewhere?
- jasonkester 16y agoIndeed. Ever the ones for brand originality, we're using artwork from iStockPhoto. At some point, I'll probably commission an illustrator to redo it all, but for now it works OK.
- honopu 16y agoAh I wasn't implying you were unoriginal, I was just unsure of the source of these things. Thank you for the information :) For the sake of others searching, my first similar styled result found: http://www.SeanJamesInteractive.com/portfolio_illustrations.php http://www.SeanJamesInteractive.com/portfolio_illustrations....
- jeffepp 16y agowow those are two of the nicer home pages I have ever seen...