Jakob Nielsen pro­vides yet another valu­able insight for your home­page design. He writes that the usabil­ity of a home­page was com­pro­mised because of fancy for­mat­ting and fancy words. Users ignored a key area because it resem­bled a pro­mo­tion. They looked at the right parts of the page but they didn’t see the essen­tial information.

It’s inter­est­ing how peo­ple ignore things they don’t want to see. I too mostly ignore adver­tise­ments, mainly because I’m not inter­ested in it. Since most sites try too hard sell­ing you some­thing it’s not won­der, I guess. Obvi­ously, less def­i­nitely is more. In order to get the most out of your online pres­ence you should check out Nielsen’s Top Ten Guide­lines for Home­page Design. Even though these guide­lines are clearly aimed at com­pa­nies they are quite use­ful for the aver­age Joe.