A content analysis method for website homepage design strategy with an example analysis for telecom company website

e homepages

F-Shaped Score Analysis

Charles Chen (Chen Qi Liang)

wwwins Isobar Taiwan Inc., Taipei, Taiwan. Email: charles.chen@isobar.com

Introduction
The homepage is the most important part of a website. But there are few methods for webpage designers or planners to create a valid homepage design strategy. In some cases, designers and planners would only doing some competitors analysis or looking for some visual-design references for inspiration. This may not a good method for homepage design because designers seldom think about business goal but their visual and aesthetic taste. In some another cases, website planners would stand out and conduct a competitor analysis, and develop a website homepage communication idea or content strategy. But the competitor analysis conduct by planners for homepage design is always subjective and arbitrary. The planners personal preference about look and feel is too easy to embed in a free-style competitor analysis. This situation forms an even worse tension and contradiction relationship between the clients, planners and designers.

F-Shaped Score Analysis

F-Shaped Score Table
A: A triangle shape on the left-top area of website. A-area score is 5 because its the most important and highest frequency visual attention area. Its width was determined by the main content on webpage, and the height was determined by the safety first folder height of webpage. The safety height was referred to Google Browser Size (Bowden, A. ,2009), the 90% people can view 500px height in their browser first fold without scrolling down. B: Beside the A-area of website. People may looking for following content beside the F-shape, so this area has more frequency than any other areas. C: This area this the first fold of webpage with scrolling. According the Google Browser Size statistic, the 60% people can view upto 600px height. D: This area is the rest area of a webpage. Area D may take long on some webpage. AT&T http://www.att.com/ Verizon http:// www.verizon.com T-Mobile (US) http:// www.t-mobile.com/ Telekom http://www.telekom.com/ Vodafone UK http://vodafone.co.uk Vodafone Global http://www.vodafone.com/ KDDI http://www.kddi.com/ Telstra http://www.telstra.com 6 information chunk categories:

An analysis for telecommunication company website homepages

8 Telecommunication company websites (2009):
LOGO tools

Homepage strategies
5 point
Product site channels Services Product catelogy

Verizon
http:// www.verizon.com

Type A Promote-driving strategy

Homepages that weighting score more than 65% PROMOTE information called promote driving homepage. PROMOTE is the most important information for this type homepage strategy. For attracting more consumer, these PROMOTE information chucks are graphic and with dynamic animation. The AT&T and Verizon homepage fall into this type. Both homepage had the same content priority: the top 3 content category are PROMOTE, PRODUCT, SERVICE and both share over 80% layout weighting.
AT&T
Verizon

Promoting Info. Promoting Info. Promoting Info.

3 point

Hot services Account Tools

Services

2 point

Promoting Info. Promoting Info. Promoting Info. Promoting Info.

Company News

1 point

Company/Website Info.

tools LOGO

5 point
Branding Info.

T-Mobile (US)
http:// www.t-mobile.com
Company, 6%
Company PR

Compan Product y Info. catelogy

Company Info.

Company News

3 point

Product, 13%

Company, 6%

Company Info.

Product, 8%

PRODUCT PROMOTE TOOLS

Information about its products, goods, and its category navigation system for consumer to find their products. Information about promoting events and advertising banners. Information or functional items, like sign-in, sign-up, forget password, search, select language, etc Information about branding, public relationship, business social responsibility, etc Information about consumer services, faq, online helping center, etc Information about company information, copyright statements, legal statements, address and contact information, stakeholder information, sitemaps or website index, etc
LOGO
LOGO Product catelogy

Company Info.

2 point
Company PR

Service, 7%

1 point
Branding Info.

Branding, 2% Tools, 6%

Service, 12%

Branding, 0%

F-shaped pattern
Eyetools Inc. (Eyetools, 2006) and Nielsen Nerman Group (Nielsen, 2006) showed that users webpage scanning in a called golden triangle or F-shaped behavior pattern. The research conducted by Eyetools Inc. was mainly with Google.com search result page, and the implication of this can patterns for marketing purpose is that viewers tend to look at the upper-left portio of search results and ignore sponsors links in the right column. (Duchowski, 2007). Nielsen(2006a) also inquiry other webpage besides search engine result page(SERP), and found that triangle shape is very general phenomenon in different types of webpage scanning behavior.

744 px

Company News

Tools, 5% Promote, 69%

Company Info.

Promote, 66%
tools

A 5 point
490 px

BRANDING SERVICE COMPANY

600 px

5 point

Services

Telekom
http://www.telekom.com

Promoting Info. Promoting Info.

3 point

Type B - PR + Promote strategy

Product catelogy

2 point
tools

1 point
Company/Website Info.

3 point

tools

Homepages that have to contain company information, and divide into two different domain names and websites. One is promote-driving, just the same with Type-A strategy; another one is purely company and public relationship information. This happened if this company was a global foundation holding and many local telecomm marketing brandings. Two websites have different objective and target audience.

5 point

tools Company Info. Company Info.

Example: AT&A homepage analysis

AT&T http://www.att.com
Company News

Vodafone UK
http://vodafone.co.uk

Branding Info.

vodafone.uk
Company, 2%

3 point

vodafone
Promote, 0.0% Product, 18% Tools, 2.0% Product, 0.0%

Company 2 point Info.

Service, 14% Branding, 0%

C D
Georg (2009) also conducted an eye-tracking research with different information tasks (information foraging & page recognition). They found the salient regions of peoples visual attention patterns when viewing Webpages is the three regions center-left, top-left, and center-center seem to be most important for information foraging tasks. For page recognition tasks the topleft, top-center, and center-left regions appear to be most important.

2 point 1 point

AT&A homepage scoring table

Block Product Product Promote Promote Tools Tools Branding Service Service Product Company Company Total Product Promote Tools Branding Service Company
AT&T
Product site channels LOGO tools
Company, 6%

1 point

Company Info.

Score 40 95 780 266 60 33 33 33 84 70 42 57 1592

% 2.5% 6.0% 49.0% 16.7% 3.8%

Products Index Promoting Info. Account Tools LOGO

5 point Product catelogy

tools Services tools

Vodafone Global
http://www.vodafone.com
Services

Tools, 7%

Company, 40.7%

Branding, 57.3% Service, 0.0%

3 point

2.1%
Promoting Info. Promoting Info.

Promote, 59%

2.1% 2.1% 5.3% 4.4% 2.6% 3.6%

LOGO

Services

2 point 1 Company/Website Info. point

Product site channels

Analysis Process
There are 3 steps in F-shaped score analysis: 1. Chucking: Chucking webpage information into categories. One can put a webpage design, mockup or wireframe on to the score table directly. But I recommend one can analyze his webpage design into information chucks categories first. Chucking webpage information into different categories is helping analyzer to compare more webpages. After chucking webpage, one could get a wireframe-like webpage. Its good to web designer or planner using wireframe in F-shaped score analysis. 2. Scoring: Putting score table on the chucked page. And calculating category scores in webpages. 3. Comparing: Comparing different Webpages, and finding different webpage content strategy patterns.

Product site channels

Services

tools

5 point
tools

Product

Services

KDDI
http://www.kddi.com

Type C Balanced strategy:

Homepages that fall into Type C only contain less 45% weighting of promotion information. But the priority of PROMOTE, PRODUCT, SERVICE, COMPANY is the same with Type A strategy, but the sharing rate is different. Because Type C homepages contain more information than Type A & C, the length of Type C homepage is longer that Type A & B (KDDI & Telestra).

Promoting Info.

205 1046 93 33 117 99

12.9% 65.7% 5.8% 2.1% 7.3% 6.2%

tools Company/Website Info. Promoting Info. Services

Company/Website Info.

3 point
Product catelogy

2 point 1 point
Product catelogy

Promoting Info.

Promoting Info.

Website Info.

Telstra

KDDI

5 point

Product, 13%

Product catelogy

Account Tools Branding Info.

Service, 7% Branding, 2%
LOGO tools Product site 5 point channels Services

Company, 11%

Tools, 6%

Promoting Info. Promoting Info. Promoting Info.

Promoting Info.

Telstra
http://www.telstra.com
Branding Info.

Company, 15%

3 point
Promoting Info.

Product catelogy

3 point

Promote, 66%
Hot services

Branding, 0%
2 point 1 point
Promoting Info.

Service, 12% Tools, 7%

Product, 28%

Product, 25% Service, 14%

Branding, 5%

Promote, 33% Tools, 8%

Company/Website Info.

Company/Website Info.

2 point
Branding Info.

Promote, 42%
Product site channels Services

Hot services

Products Index

Services

Company Info.
Website Info. Promoting Info.

Company/Website Info.

1 point Company/Website Info.

Website Info.
Website Info.

Services

Tools