What not to put on your homepage
I have a friend who showed me something on the WineAccess homepage tonight that just made me laugh. Check it out.
See anything wrong with that picture? How about the “What You Missed” section at the bottom? It contains wine bottles that you can’t purchase, because they’re sold out. Hence the title. Worthless information with which the user can do nothing, essentially wasted primo homepage real estate.
Homepage design is a very complex topic, but you can definitely tuck this one in the “What not to do” column.
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I don’t know if I agree. I think the intended purpose was to create a sense of urgency, and show that the site is a lively place and that users had better buy the wines they want now. Who knows if it’s a successful tactic, but I wouldn’t call it “worthless”.
Thanks for the input, Daniel! The WineAccess designers agree with you, so you’re obviously not alone in your opinion.
This section does convey urgency, yes, but offers no way to instantly act on that urgency. A homepage is first and foremost a call to action, a gateway to do more on the site. This feature offers no route to a specific action, hence my critique.
I agree with Frank.
The idea of urgency is fine, but with no call to action, there’s really no point! They would be better off showing links to best selling items, or items that are close to selling out.
Conveying urgency for the mere sake of urgency doesn’t really make much sense to me.
I agree that it seems the purpose of the section is to create a sense of urgency, but I also agree that the space is wasted because the user can do nothing with that information (other than sulk that they missed out and try to remember to visit the site more often).
If I was in charge, I’d turn that section into “Almost Gone!” and list the items that were about to sell out. Then people would be encouraged to make impulse buys
I think Aston and Doug have the right idea. Urgency without action is worthless.
I bet that the “right” idea that floated around in someone’s head at Wine Access until it died in a committee.