First Impressions Last

When a user types a GeoCities homestead's address in a browser, the first thing s/he sees is the index.html page or index page. So for instance, when http://www.oocities.org/SouthBeach/1000/ is typed in a browser, the page that first appears is http://www.oocities.org/SouthBeach/1000/index.html . The same is actually true for other web sites like CNN or Yahoo such that whenever someone types http://www.yahoo.com, for example, s/he will actually be seeing the http://www.yahoo.com/index.html page. Note though that some web servers substitute default.html for index.html (but this is beside my point).

Since the index page is the one that is first seen by most users, it is very important for it to be designed well. After all, most web users believe that the index page is as good, if not the best, of all the pages in a web site. Thus, a site or homestead that has a bad index page will not attract as many visitors as a site that has a good index page.

At this point, you might be wondering what makes a good index page. Well, for one, it must load relatively quickly. Most users already dread waiting for thirty seconds for a page to load. So if your index page takes more than a minute to load, then its content and design should be really worth the web user's time. Obviously, for faster loading, minimize the use of large graphic, music and other interactive files. Besides the load time, you must also try to make the top of your index page as interesting and as informative as possible. Since it is the top of the index page that is always first rendered by the browser, users will appreciate it if they can determine the themes of the site just by seeing the aforementioned area. Of course, this rule should be extended to the rest of the page. After all, visitors want to have a good overview of as well as quick access to the contents of the site via the index page.

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Last update: May 21, 2000

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