I don't care about your news
I’ve noticed a rather confusing trend amongst a lot of website’s; people seem to think I care most about news.
Time and time again I come across website’s for software and mods of which I know relatively little that seem to think the best thing to show me when I visit their website is…news.
I don’t care about your news. I barely know what the product is, so why do I care that some bug I didn’t know existed is now fixed? I have visited the website with one purpose, to find out why it’s so much better than all the competitors. What features does it have that make it unique? What can I do with it? And then let me download it to try it out.
If I like it, then yes, I will maybe come back for news and updates. But I’m now a committed customer, I now have no problem clicking on a “News” link, or read an RSS feed.
But if I stumble across the your website I want to be able to see at a glance what the product is, what it does, why I should use it and finally where I can get it. Put it all on the front page where I can see it without having to click on links. Put a short statement about the product on there, a bulleted list of features, some pictures of it, a link to the most commonly required download, all on the front page. That way I can stumble across it, see that “ooh, I like that” and that “ooh, it looks shiny”, download it and fall in love with it.
And there are some people that do that, some clever people. I’ve decided that if you can’t entice me to download from the frontpage, or at a push in two pages, then I simply will not download and use your software. You don’t deserve me.