"The value is in
land" “Location! Location! Location!” “Invest in land..they aren't making any more of it"
Those real estate axioms are well known and are even truer today than ever. But they also are applicable to your website.
We hear and read every day how our websites are competing with millions of others in great race to be found online. We have to first work, work and work some more to get our piece of "web real estate" in a position to be found through search engine management and placement. We secure as many quality links as we can get. We meticulously research our ultimate key word phrases and then pay for best position. All of this just to get your website on screen in front of a potential customer.
Once customer is looking at your page, you have just seconds to capture enough of her attention to keep her there a few more seconds, then a minute, maybe two or three minutes. Long enough to read your information and then gain enough confidence in you, who you are, and what you are offering to actually place an order or seek more information.
Know what odds of all that coming together are?
Ever hear of lottery?
So what does all this have to do with web page real estate?
When your landing page pops up on viewer's monitor, what do they see? Without scrolling down page, without clicking on any links, what is immediately visible? This initial space, considering a typical browser occupies about one inch at top can make or break your goal of getting them to hang around long enough to find out what your site is all about.
So you can now see how critical it is when designing your main or index page. Give it some serious thought when planning this page. Your subsequent pages are worthless if viewer's attention isn't held long enough to even discover you have anything else to say. The value of your index page real estate is very high. Make sure that what they see and read from that initial screen view is best you have. Make it your knock out punch. Do not waste space with boring, self-indulging rhetoric. Don't fill it up with words about you and your company and how long you have been in business, what your goals are etc. If you want to make that info available do it via a link or popup.
