Another long awaited change to our website has rolled out – a slightly updated front page and navigational redesign.
Obviously we are not in a position for a wholesale site redesign – something that is probably becoming a luxury these days – not just in terms of money but also in terms of user familiarisation. (Why change your website on a grand scale if you have a significant number of ‘regular’ visitors?)
However, we’ve managed to squeeze some more ‘value’ out of our front page, increasing the promotional banner spaces to six as well as allowing for horizontally scrolling ‘extras’. Not much else has changed – the navigation remains the same.
We found that 800×600 and less only represented under 8% (49% use 1024×768) of our site visitation and thus moving to a slightly longer home page (although not wider) would not impact on the majority our users.
A small footer change is coming soon.
4 replies on “New Powerhouse front page”
Looks good, but why the focus on the physical museum with no pathway for virtual visitors, especially given the impact of OPAC 2.0? Is the site’s target audience those who visit the exhibitions only??
Hi Lynda
Because we know the visitors who visit the front page of the Museum’s website are almost all visit-oriented in their intentions. Also, at the moment we have a lot to promote in terms of physical visitation – which is not to say we can’t use the rotating promo banners as a means to promote other parts of the site.
Also, we use the exhibition pages as a means to dive further into the collection areas. At the end of the day though, we want to encourage physical visitation as much as possible.
Seb
How did you learn your visitors’ screen resolution info? A survey or something?
TS,
Web analytics.
Most page tag analysis solutions offer this – even Google Analytics that is free does this. You should be able to do this across your own site pretty easily.