Question: what is wrong with the homepage of Unisys Belgium?

Answer: just about everything 

As a screenshot the homepage doesn’t look all that bad. But when you really use the page you immediately notice all sorts of things going wrong.

• The attention grabbers (Security, Data Center Transformation & Outsourcing…) hardly do anything. Okay, the image on the right changes on mouse-over. But other than that: nothing, nada, zilch. You can’t even click them.
• There’s no other useful content on the homepage:
  • The news and links to case studies are pretty typical homepage content. Even though user tests show that’s not what people want to see on a homepage.
  • The links in the ‘About Unisys’ block (’Careers’ excepted)are irrelevant for 99% of their visitors and not worth the space they’re taking up here.
• Where’s the main navigation? Is Unisys too cool to have something so traditional as a main navigation?
• Last but not least there’s the tagline ’Solving your business-critical challenges’. A good line, but not exactly unique to the business Unisys is in. I can say that about my company. And you can probably say it about yours. It’s meaningless. And what’s more, the tagline itself isn’t clickable, only the ‘Learn more’ is.

Is it really all that bad? 

Doh. If you have any doubts about the degree to which this homepage sucks, you should be banned from professionally dealing with websites for the rest of your life.

Movie

Just in case Unisys changes the homepage before you read this, here’s a little movie with the homepage and the page that appears when you click ’Learn more’.

But what exactly is on the page ’My Alfa WITHOUT WAITING’?

Nothing yet… So I guess we WAIT?

And yet, websites and blogs are still littered with “Click here” and “Read more” links. Here’s a little reminder, and a few examples, why meaningful links are so important.

1. Why meaningful links?

• Links stand out
  Because links are underlined and a different colour, they stand out. They’re like little anchors for the eye. If our brain registers things like “Click here” and “Read more“, that’s not very helpful. Links like “Usability workshop” or “One-day user test” are far more useful. Surfers know what to expect when they click these links.  
• Google likes meaningful links
  When indexing pages Google not only takes into account the words on the page itself but also the words in the links to that page. A link to a “Usability workshop” helps that page score better for the words “usability” and “workshop”.
• Visually impaired users
  Visually impaired users also scan web pages. Not with their eyes but by jumping from link to link with special software. The links appear on the braille reader or are read out. No prizes for guessing which sort of links they prefer.

2. Tips

• Avoid links that only say “Click here”, “Read more” or similar things.
• Make sure a link says something about the page it refers to.
• Titles of articles on home- and overview pages should be clickable. That way, you don’t even need a “Read more” link at the end.  
• Put the most important words first, to play into surfers’ scanning behaviour.

3. Examples

Better: “Find an Invisalign doctor near you.”

Better: Leave out the “More” link and simply make the title clickable.