May 16
#1: Killing new visitors
I have seen many, many companies that do this. They place a huge logo (some actually use a small one) on their website and you get to choose to click the X button of the tab (or entire browser), or to enter the website, in one language or another. Or, just “click here”.
This scenario is terrible! First of all, it is by no means good for search engine optimization. The index page contains little information about your website, and furthermore, if your logo is animated in flash, the search engine’s bot will not know that there’s something else behind your logo.
Thirdly, your visitors will not click that button immediately. Your logo may even look like a banner and they will think your website contains some banner. Having only a banner, it will look like a scam, or some phishing website. I am sure you do not want that.
So, what are the solutions?
First of all, get rid of the idea that your logo matters and this way you will not kill you developer when saying you will not pay until you see your logo, and only your logo on the homepage.
Secondly, you could have 30 languages in your website. Displaying them beneath a large footer in the index page is not a solution. The solution is loading a default language(*) and then adding a nice dropdown list in a corner of your website.
You can check The FWA to get an idea of how a really stupid index page looks like. Even if it is their case, in which you change the whole domain name! Make a proper redirection to the new one. Nobody cares to know you switched domains. They will see it for themselves while browsing your website, after you redirected them.
In next article, I will expand a bit this general homepage issue which many seem to have it.
Cheers!
