Web Design For Idiots

I view a lot of websites in my free time. I offer design and functionality feedback to newbies in the online forums. More times than I can count, I will click on a link in one of those feedback forums, and there it is. A SPLASH PAGE. The most annoying and useless page on any website.

You might be thinking, “Well, my website has a splash page, but it’s because the script I used put the main part of my website in a sub folder”

If you use a “simple script” installer, you probably had this happen to you. When you install something like oscommerce or wordpress, you are usually asked to name the folder or directory in which you want to keep that script in. With oscommerce, the default is “catalog” and with wordpress it is usually “blog.” Then you realize that when you type your domain name in, you see your normal home page, or if you dont have one, NOTHING. Then you realize that in order to get to the script you just installed, you have to type in yourdomain.com/catalog to see your new script in action.

The “newbie” thing to do would to be to create a page called index.html that will show a nice little graphic or a flash animation that says ENTER or SHOP NOW

Other times, people will create a splash page because they have multiple sections to their site. For instance, a photographer might have a portfolio, a store, and a blog all on the same page. They then assume that it is a good idea to make their first page a place where the user chooses where they want to be, the Blog, Portfolio, or Store. It sounds like it makes sense, but it is not the best idea and here is why.

#1 reason why splash pages are a BAD IDEA

They kill your SEO (search engine optimization). Just so you know, people do not PAY to get on the first page of google, those people on the first page of google just have websites that are very search engine optimized. If you want to learn more about optimizing your website for search engines, see this post.

Search engines, especially google, have very complicated algorithms to calculate which website in their directory is the most relevant to the terms entered in the search box. One of the things that search engines give a lot of weight to is the content on your first landing page. They assume that you will put the most relevant and important content on your first page because that is where most people will end up. They also use the main page to spider through your website, the more links to the rest of your website that is on your main page, the better it is for the search engines.

So now that you know this, when you think about a splash page, it goes against every thing that search engines want to see in a website. A splash page is usually ONE picture (or flash item) and ONE link into the website. This gives the search engine almost nothing as far as the most important content on your site. You want your main page to be a plethora of information about your website.

#2 reason why splash pages are a BAD IDEA

It annoys and confuses customers. Especially flash or video splash pages or intros. Most people who are browsing the net are people who like things instant. This is about 98% of society. People who search the internet are there for instant gratification. The goal of all web designers is to create as few clicks to get the customer from one page to where they WANT to be. When you have a splash page, you are already adding one click just to SEE the content which they will then have to click another time to get to the category or page they want to be in.

Also, there is no way that you can fully summarize your website and all of it’s content with one image and an enter here link. When a customer finds your website somewhere on the net, (via search engine, link in someone else’s site, etc) they don’t really know what you are all about and they really can not learn that from your main page. That makes your first impression very poor, or almost non-existent.

When a regular user comes to your site, they already know what they want and where they want to be. It will be quite annoying to see that same page over and over again that they know contains not one thing that they want to read about.

Oh yea, and did I mention, if you have a flash intro it’s even worse. Then you have to sit there while you wait for the darn thing to load, and if you have a slow internet connection, it is going to really drive you nuts. If you are a new visitor, at this point you would think to yourself,
“This is not worth it, I can probably get the same thing/information somewhere else on the net”

So this may of may not leave you with a dilemma.

You have a website that’s already built and you don’t know how to move things so that you do not need this splash page.

Depending on your situation you can do one of 3 things.

If you have a website that is just ONE thing. (Meaning it is JUST a store, or JUST a blog) You can simply log into your hosting control panel and create a REDIRECT. What this does is it automatically will bring people to yourdomain.com/blog when a visitor types in yourdomain.com. The visitor will see a change in the url bar, but it will not be a change that will alarm them. The search engines will be the same. They will crawl to your domain but instantly get redirected to your sub directory of “blog” and use that content as your main page content. This is, however, not the best way to do it because search engines are not super keen on redirects, but it is WAY better than a splash page. Lots of high ranking sites still use a redirect for their root (yourdomain.com) to their sub directory (yourdomain.com/blog).

The other thing you can do is reconfigure your script to be moved into your root (yourdomain.com). If you have an oscommerce website, you can read about how to do that here. If you have wordpress you can click here. If you need help with a different type of script, feel free to contact me!

And finally, if you have a site that has multiple types of content (like a portfolio, blog, and store) then you need to figure out which you would like for customers to see on first impression, and then create a navigation in which you can get to any one of those sections without having to move from the page in which you are on. You then will move that one part into your root directory, and can keep the rest of the parts in their existing directories. You can see an example of this here on my husband’s photography website: BSC Photo

Looking at the landing page of the site, you can see that there is a lot of content, and there is a link to all parts of the portfolio as well as the shop. We are adding a link to the blog soon

So the moral of today; Ditch the Splash Page and get a nice, userfriendly home page.

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Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Someone who is relatively new to web design. I am new enough to still remember how absolutely frustrating it was to try and get anything done in this field, but have also been around long enough to be able to help those that are where I was a year ago. Aside from web design, I run the office of my dad's engineering business, and do book keeping by trade. I love my pets.. All 6 cats, 1 peg legged dogs, and 1 hedgehog. LOVE THEM!! Oh yea, and my husband. He lets me chase my dreams and I let him do the same. We are happy people because of it. Read more from this author

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm and is filed under SEO, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.