First I have to say that my homepage is also not the best, but when I checked some homepages out there, I always find tiny things you should avoid doing it. Something I once learned is that a homepage is just the first page of your website and you shouldn’t use “homepage” if you talk about “website”, but for me it’s already so common that I don’t hesitate to use it wrong way.

1. Keep it simple: Don’t confuse visitors with too much information on the first page. Keep it simple and clean. The visitors want to say “Cool” and not “Oh my god”.
2. Make a good impression: The first page is like the visit card of you. If the visitors don’t like it, they will also not continue clicking on your homepage.
3. Easy navigation: Make a tree with all your pages and if you have a lot, use sub-trees in it. Make it as simple as possible for visitors to find what they are looking for.
4. Make it attractive: The visitors want to get something from your homepage. If you don’t put your know-how, links, software or text on it, nobody will visit it.
5. Easy fonts: Use simple and good-to-read fonts. Not more than 2 differents and don’t use red font on orange background.
6. Very important – Pictures: A digital picture has a size which is defined with pixels and a resolution. If you don’t know what I talk about, read my next post “Image handling”. 1600 x 1200 and 72dpi are the maximum for a picture on a website. If it’s not a picture from Angelina Jolie naked, use smaller size. 1024×768 for example. I use 800×600 and 72dpi as a JPG with quality 60%.
7. Under construction: Never write “Coming soon..”, “Under contstruction” or “will do it later”. Nobody believes you!
8. Multiple browser: Test your homepage with Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari. Sometimes it’s looking awful on some browser and it can be fixed with just changing one row of code.
9. Check it properly: Click on every link on your homepage. Is it working like you want? Ask your friends to test every link and read every text.
10. Write a date: If you write a topic, always write a date. I hate homepages with content I don’t know their actuality.
11. No SPAM: Never write your email address on your homepage. If it’s necessary use “name (at) lastname.com”. Using a contact formular is better.
12. Stay legal: If you make a comercial homepage which you earn money, don’t steal pictures, videos or text.
13. Get know your visitors: Install Firestat to know who visit your homepage and know what they are looking for.
14. Be fast: As faster the homepage as better it is.
15. No sound: Don’t let play automatically sound, I hate that!
16. No frames: Don’t use frames, Google can’t find you with them.
17. Correct size: Make your homepage for 1024×768 windows.
18. Check other sites: A good example is probably my wedding homepage.

These rules are my opinion. Thank you.