First let me say +100 to Daniel's comments, a few lines of which I've included at the end of this note.
Here's my take:
The most important thing about a website, especially the first (or "home") page, is *usability*. The site must *meet the needs of visitors*. It's not what you want to tell them, but *what they want to know*, that is most important, especially on the first page. Daniel has stated quite clearly what he sees as those needs. I agree with him.
The question is then, what content, and what grouping and placement of that content on the page, best meets those needs? Matthew has provided one suggestion, which I think is a good one. Daniel has modified that suggestion and, in my opinion, improved upon it. Yes there are details to nitpick about, but *at the mockup stage* we should not focus on those details (colours and specific graphics, for example), but rather on the basic content and the grouping and placement of that content on the page. Once the basics are agreed upon, then we look at the details that make a page friendly and eye-catching as well as usable.
I'd like to mention two books that I have found extremely useful when conducting classes on website usability. They both take the approach of critiquing existing site design and then changing that design to make it more usable. There are, of course, many other books on website usability, but I like these best because they have lots of illustrations to show what the authors are talking about.
The books are:
Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug, New Riders, 2000, ISBN 0789723107, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0789723107/qid=1105866763/
(Note: 2nd edition is due out in June 2005).
Homepage Usability, by Jakob Nielsen & Marie Tahir, New Riders, 2001, ISBN 073571102X, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/073571102X/qid=1105866927/
Daniel has done a fine job of describing what he did in his mockup, and why he did those things. Let's focus on those issues first, and leave the details until later. I think his groupings of topics, placement of the main elements (eg downloads), and overall simplification (eg getting rid of the Mission Statement and the login box), are a great improvement over what's on the site's first page now, *from the visitors' point of view", which is what matters.
Regards, Jean Jean Hollis Weber
Daniel wrote,
> First, let me start by laying out objectives. What do we want from the > website? I'll divide the main tasks into 3 groups, one is specific, two > are broad: > > (a) Download the software. > (b) Community/people (for lack of a better term). <snip> > (c) About OOo. <snip> > > We start by figuring out what our priorities for the home page are. I > layed them out like this: > > 1. Download the software. > 2. Everything in category (b). > 3. Everything in category (c). > > Now, before discussing the specific changes, I want to list some general > points about usability. <details snipped> > > With these things in mind, let's move on to the mockup. <details snipped>
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