www.domain.com/

Home Page

Domain.com/ is the single most important page of your site. You'd think that was obvious, and yet many sites abuse that page.

"home" should always be http://www.domain.com - sometimes it's http://www.domain.com/articles/component/article?front_page - not likely to remebered by a single visitor, linked to by a single directory. Or taken seriously by a single search engine.

index.html and /

Every internal link to your index page should be to "/" NOT to /index.html

Get that wrong, and Search engines will see the page as TWO pages, thus dividing your incoming benefits. If, as you read this, the SEs have made that mistake - then arrange a 301 permanent redirect from /index.html to /

(it's a good idea to do this for every folder, too).

Content

You want visitors to stay, and see more of your site. So minimise the outgoing links from your front page, including advertising links. And make the page attractive. It's your shop window, your catalog, your reputation ... maybe your one opportunity to convert a visitor into a customer.

So it should be interesting; useful and reader-friendly.

The home page should (one way or another) tell the visitor what you are about, and provide a clear and helpful navigation system for the site.

Exactly how much and what goes there, will depend a lot on the individual site. For example, a niche site with a fair proportion of returning visitors would need to show "What's New", so those folk knew their visit was not wasted.

A site that depends on the results of random searches would probably do well to show popular products, and something to show the range of products available.

There should be some permanent text on the front page, which should aid stability in the serps.

Putting the whole catalog might make the page so large that dialup visitors might get bored ... same with large images and gimmicks. The key, I think, is to think about who your visitors are, and what will be best for them. It's a marketing decison first, design a close second.

Splash pages

Domain.com is your key page, and that should be where visitors arrive; the splash page is purely for webmaster vanity ... for visitors, it's a waste of their time. For repeat visitors, it's a poke in the eye.