HOME PAGES

The top of your home page will be the first thing Web users see when accessing your site, so the proper design of home pages is crucial to the success of your site. Design strategies for home pages vary, based on the function and needs of typical users of the site, the esthetic and design goals for the site, and on the nature and complexity of the organization of the Web site as a whole.

Graphic or text menus
The most basic layout decision you will make about your home page concerns how heavily you will use graphics on the page. While strong graphics can be effective at grabbing a browser's attention, large graphic menus impose long loading times for pages, especially for users linking to the Internet via modems or slower network connections. Even if the user is accessing your Web site at Ethernet speeds (10 Mbits/sec) graphic menus may still load ten times slower than text-based lists of links.

http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/sites/site_elements.html

next