The importance of homepage usability design

After reading statements made by Jakob Neilsen in the BBC article ‘Web users are getting more ruthless’, I was surprised to hear that only 25% of people travel to a website via the homepage. With the power of search engines such as Google becoming ever more prominent, it seems obvious that any activity conducted online will involve a search engine at some point. As a direct result, visitors are empowered to navigate directly to the desired webpage and often bypass the homepage altogether. Following this news I began to wonder, is the usability of the homepage as important as it once was and are we focussing too much attention to this page if many people are unlikely to see it?

My thoughts are that the homepage is still important as it conveys a lot about the company it represents. Those visitors who may not initially see the homepage at the start of their journey will still regard it as the central point of navigation once deep inside the website and will therefore have expectations on how it should look and perform. Although 75% of visitors bypass the homepage, how many of those find what they are looking for on the page provided by the search engine? What do visitors do next when they cannot find what they are looking for? In this situation, navigation and homepage design become particularly important to visitors. Suggesting that more research is required to provide evidence to support or refute Nielsen’s claims.

In tests that User Vision have undertaken in the past, a different approach has been conducted to take into account a user’s journey to a website as well as their journey through the website. In these cases, participants were asked to start a task from a blank page or a search engine of their choice. Conducting usability tests in this way has been extremely beneficial because it increases the realism of the test and provides greater insight into the user journey. Although this method can add time to a test and a proportion of that time will inevitably be spent searching for the pages you are trying to test, overall the benefits make it worthwhile. In addition, the evidence from Neilsen supports the idea that testing in this way is becoming increasingly necessary. Therefore companies commissioning usability testing in the future should seriously consider allowing time to test in this way as it gives greater insights into how people find their site.