Once your viewer has made the decision to stay, draw their attention to what you feel they should see first. Here at BigNoseBird we structured the main page like this:

• The Welcome Mat.
• E-mail & Guestbook as ways to communicate with me.
• My current features and new material. A constant reminder to check the Recent Additions page.
• An option to search my site.
• A guide that outlines the major pages in this site.
• Some information about the site.

There is a lot of material on a wide variety of topics that we present. You may be here for one or more reasons, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to find the information you need.

One method does not work in all situations. Visit other sites of all sorts and see what they do. It can be difficult, but try and remove yourself from the role of webmaster, and surf your site from the perspective of your anticipated audience.

Mark your front door clearly.

Make certain that every page on your site has a clear and prominant link back to your main page. The word HOME or the icon of a house seems to be an easy enough way to do it. This way if somebody gets lost wandering around, they can quickly find their way to where they started without trying to retrace their steps.

More others...