MAMUAYA

a friend of mine was making a website for his client and while he showed the mock up HTML + CSS design his client was a little bit disappointed. The client wanted the frontpage of the to fit in one page and visitor doesn’t have to scroll it. The client thought that it was rather annoying.

Well, is it?

The way i think about it, he’s got a point. People do get irritated to find a frontpage with too much information. A frontpage should be a home of links to elsewhere, thats why its named “index” because it contains the whole link to the rest of the pages. 

But how if the information to publish is a lot?? Can we make it all shown in the frontpage? Of course, it is not wrong as long the information is essential and with a good design. If too many information on a single page with bad webdesign, visitors will go away ASAP! A good example of a Badly designed website with too many information is Detik.com. A good example is Zdnet.com.

So what about the design?? what makes a design “good”??

Simply play the color and layout so visitor’s eye is attracted horizontally ( downward ). If you have a lot of information in the frontpage, make sure you dont have to many color variationl. Just use 2-4 color and make it be harmonious with the layout design.

Another thing is the font color and size. A lot of experts debate on the use of pixels and ems. Im not going too deep on this, but you can read lots of good article about this… and this is one of it from alistapart.com. 

The point is, if you have a lot of information in the frontpage you may not want a huge sized font even for a header / headline. The font color is also crucial otherwise no one will be able to read it.

Conclusions? Its okay to have a scrollable frontpage as long as you have a good reason for it. If you want to keep it simple just make simple with minimalist design, duotone color, and it actually gives you more chance to improvise with the illustration or even flash animations.