The Perfect Home Page

The above scrolling thing does nothing for me.  I see this as uninteresting as the new v4 hover effect on the category page - just something to turn off and to work around when editing code. (Sorry.)

 

Our most frequent requests/needs are the ability to:

 

- feature categories on the home page rather than individual products

 

- use different images (either for products or categories) on the home page than those used in the interior pages.  The idea being that product images in some industries are very poor.  The images on the store are selected on the basis that strong images were available for an isolated selection of products.  The images used for the interior pages for those same products are the manufacturer's "inferior" images (or smaller) so that they don't clash with the rest of the product line, but we do happen to  have nicer images for the home page. 

Interior page images are frequently a different size than home page images.  We store those home page images at a different path, EI could provide a 4th image reference which is intended only for  home page use - for example.

 

- Arranging "new arrivals" in the same horizontal layout as "featured products".

 

We've developed an alternate strategy, featured on www.madcowcutlery.com, www.ahamodernliving.com and www.koolertek.com where we administer the images/links/text/prices via a seperate configuration file. Using that strategy, we have ultimate control over the layout, while providing a mechanism by which the merchant may alter their selections. If we had that level of control via the store admin, that would rock.

 

Ultimately, I think messing with the home page is less important than other possible improvements.

 

One of the most important feature enhancements I would wish to see, rather than dancing around the edges and playing with the home page, would be the ability to put products on sale without touching standard pricing.  I'd want the sale price to override the online price, and to be controlled by a begin/end date setting.  Establishing a store or category-wide sale, perhaps using a percentage, would add flexibility.  And yes, I understand this requires a greater effort than home page cosmetic changes.  But I see it as a critical need.

Greg: it might do "nothing" for you, but do you realize that virtually ALL of the leading e-commerce Web sites have a slider or "gallery" element as the #1 element shown on the home page? Again, not one of the elements on the home page. The number one element on the home page!

Let's just look at a few:

• Staples
  9.8 B in sales. Automatic slider with 4 offers shown.
• Dell
  4.5 B in sales. Automatic slider with 5 offers shown.
  
• Office Depot
  $4.1 B in sales. Automatic slider with 4 offers shown.

We could go on and on.

In any case, this is just one improvement that could be made to the home page, and that - according to empirical evidence - is one way chosen by most leading e-commerce stores to present their newest and best offers.

The home page is an absolutely crucial element of any e-commerce store. Please keep your suggestions and comments in this thread strictly focused on what tools and design elements could be added to the home page to make it a stronger, more effective "landing" page within a ProductCart-powered store.

Thanks!

 

Along the lines of the "slider" - I second Mark's comment about using something like JQuery - why not just use JQuery?? I think that this is a valuable option for the home page (but please make it so that it can be easily turned off).

 

And, instead of publishing to twitter why not make it an option to grab the JQuery "Recent Twitter Posts" thing - that displays them right on the home page? It is super easy to style!

 

I liked the featured categories idea as well.

 

OK, that was 3 comments!

 

Amy