Web Design & SEO Articles

I apologise if I go a bit nostalgic, but in the old days of the website (Post 2000) the average website had on the first page their logo, their slogan and a collage if images showing to you what they did. For example, various cuts of meat for a butcher, or pictures of happy people in their new house for an estate agent, and so on.

This was affectionately known as a welcome page and it welcomed you to a website and in order to get into the other pages, you had to "Click Here" or "Click to Enter" etc. Click, of course would take you to index2, where the real homepage with all the real information was.

This setup was almost like a Welcome mat, where you wipe your feet before proceeding to the other rooms of the house. Designers seemed to love them as it gave them a chance to show off their existing talents without any of that annoying text.

So why do you not see these virtual doormats anymore? Well for a few reasons actually:

1. Spamming Yes, because of exploitation from those pesky spammers that would (and still will) try every dirty trick in the book to get you to see their site. These dirty tricks mainly involved stuffing keywords the same colour as the background colour on the welcome page, or the welcome page would be treated as a doorway page and after a few seconds the "real" website (In most cases, Porn) would pop up. because of this:


2. Search Engines Hate Them The vicious circle that starts with spammers exploiting the search engines, follows with Search Engines wising up to the spammers. As a result, the way Search Engines index your site has changed. They love text and lots of it. There is now no room for fancy doormats and due to their lack of vital content, Search Engines don't value them at all.


3. Visitors demand more The Internet of yesteryear used to be quite bland. Now functions where you can interact with the site, eg you can search homes on Right Move, vote on a daily poll in MyKindaPlace etc. Visitors don't want a welcome page seperating them from the main function of your website, they want the content and fast.


4. Good design comes from elsewhere
We have covered content already, but a website has to have the right feel for your target market audience. Without the right feel and a user-friendly navigation, visitors will feel alienated and go to a site that can cater for their needs

For all of these reasons, pages are just no longer practical for use in a website. They are the Puffball Skirts of the 80s, the Tamagotchis of the 90s. So if you still have a welcome page, do yourself a favour and lose it. Use the index2 page instead.