The Home Page: Further Examples - Page 4

What website are we on here? Very clear that it's NetFlix. Second, what is the purpose of this site? Reasonably clear that this is a place to rent DVDs. But if you overlook the top of the page and glance directly at the middle of the page (as done by many users), you might also have thought that this was a site with movie reviews. The most prominent individual design element is probably the text entry box marked "Redeem" which is only useful for users with a special coupon. The entire coupon process takes up too much space on the home page: It would have been simpler to provide a link to a special page that could have explained the process better. Also, the search field slightly vanishes into the back-ground of the navigation bar even though it is more important to most users than the coupon. A bigger problem with this home page, however, is the small amount of space allocated to the content directory relative to the current specials. The true depth of the site (3,700 prod-ucts) is not well represented. The design does get a bonus point for the "1-2- 3" area: simple and scannable content that summarizes the process of doing business with the site.

These two airline sites show different approaches to home page design. United Airlines focuses on easy access to the many features on its site, whereas American Airlines focuses on easy access to two important features: logging in to your frequent flyer account and finding a flight between two cities. United Airlines' approach works best if use is fairly evenly distributed across multiple features. The home page makes it clear what one can do on this site, even though the "shortcuts" are too indistinct and fail to emphasize the site's most important features. The use of two levels of categories frees users from having to scan through all the features. I would have preferred to use three top-level categories instead of two: I think that "Reservations" and "Mileage Plus" (the frequent flyer program) should be combined into a single top-level category, because they both relate to the individual user's specific data and trips. The two remaining categories contain generic information about air travel and the corporation, respectively.

American Airlines' approach reduces the vast majority of site features to a set of pull-down menus that are difficult to navigate: Users can never see the full set of features (like they can at United) because they can pop up only a single menu at a time. And many of the menus are so long that they require scrolling, meaning that users can't even view the entire list of options in a menu in a single glance. Thus, American Airlines' approach works only if the two highlighted features, in fact, account for almost all use of the site.

For both sites, note how they have successfully combined traditional corporate information with e-commerce capabilities. There is no conflict between having a site that serves both functions as long as users quickly can find the links to buying stuff. United Airlines fails slightly here, even though it does make "Reservations" the first (and thus most prominent) category in its navigation scheme.

The Home Page - Page 3
Designing Web Usability
How Wide Should the Page Be? - Page 5