I was called over to Stu’s desk earlier today when he asked me “Dude, have you heard of Ralio?” (which is a Java Coldfusion - CFML - interpreter or engine).
“Yes I have”, I replied.
“Just imagine for a second you didn’t know about it and take a look at this”, he said pointing to the Railo website open on his screen.
After a few seconds of skimming the homepage I had to admit that he was right, if I had no prior knowledge of Railo then I would not have gained any insight as to what Railo is from the homepage, worse still the information cannot be found under the About Railo section.
Sometimes things like this are very easy to slip through when creating a website (or other promotional material) for your new product/service/idea/whatever; as you and everyone involved already know what it is you’re trying to promote.
However it is always important to step back from whatever it is your doing (and I know I’ve been guilty of not always doing this in the past), whether it be a new site, product or even a new page on an existing site, and ask yourself if it carries enough information for users with no prior knowledge.
I quite like the Railo homepage, although it’s a tad cluttered for me, so in this case the solution should be quite simple; there’s plenty of room either in the header or the flash banner to add a tag line explaining what Railo is.