Home page mostly graphic image

[ChristiMc]

I have a new customer that is redesigning her website.  The graphic designer has designed a lovely homepage that is mostly an image with some navigation and footer area for text information.

My concern is that there isn't any real call to action or anything on the homepage design other than an interesting and fun graphic.  It seems like years ago this was a common practice and then later it was looked down on as not good for the user experience or SEO.

What is the latest thinking on this type of design?  Should the homepage (www.mysite.com) be allowed to be mostly images? Or should we focus on the optimizing the internal pages and let the homepage be more creative?

[Francisco_Meza]

If the owner will not allow the home page to be optimized, then make your internal pages optimized. Also, unless you are Lexus or a company with a lot of branding, trying to get a flash site to rank will be difficult because there is no text.

I personally would put content on there. Do not be afraid to share the domain here to give better feedback.

[ChristiMc]

Thanks for the response, Francisco.  The homepage wouldn't be Flash, just an image a short menu for navigation and then some footer info.  The new design isn't live yet.  It's just a concept.  I wanted to run the idea by the experts before I let her know what was best.

My hunch is that it's not a great idea but thought there might be ways to deal with it and not take a big hit.

She'll be changing her domain name at the same time as she's changing her design, too.  So, it's all up in the air at the moment and I want to give her the best advice I can before she heads in a direction she'll regret later.

I've included a mockup of the homepage in this reply.  The graphic would change since this one is just a concept/placeholder graphic but the concept is of a neighborhood with streets and paths all around.

UIqXt.jpg

[Francisco_Meza]

New site plus no content equals no ranking. You will need a lot of anchor text to help rank the site.

Read chapter 4

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo