Three Questions

I have been thinking about how to best communicate information on a (specifically, company’s) website, and how to use content most effectively.

Take a company’s homepage for example; I’m a potential customer, I’m running through a page of google results and I’m likely to bounce straight off the website after 7 seconds (note-to-self: find the report where I read this) if I can’t see what I’m looking for – I’ve hit your homepage and I need to know immediately that I’m looking at something relevant.

The main questions in my mind are:

• WHO is this company.
• WHAT do they do.
• WHERE are they based.

The answers to these core questions should be sort and sweet, and should then invite the user to explore and learn more. WHO would logically link off to an ‘about us’ page, WHAT would link to whatever they company is trying to flog, and WHERE would link to a ‘contact us’ section. Obviously this set of questions can be extended to include others, but these core three should be clearly answered on all of the website’s main entry paths, if not to some extent on every page. Do users always enter the site via the homepage?

Similarly, this ‘three questions’ rule can be applied to a product the company might be offering:

• WHAT is the product.
• WHY do I need it.
• HOW much is it.

Again, these questions should be mind-numbingly obvious and immediately answerable to prevent users fatigue levels rising.

An example of this can be seen on twitter.com where they use what, why and how on their homepage to get the message across.

I’m not sure this is strictly the rule of three, but using this similar idea should improve copy and visit lengths by getting to the point, keep users interested and eliminating the all-too-common problem of copywaffle.