Somebody arrives at a creator's front page from a link they half remember. They have perhaps ten seconds of patience and three questions: what is this, is it for me, and what do I do next. A surprising number of otherwise well-made sites answer none of the three, and instead present a logo, a biography, and a menu of categories.
Fixing this is not a design problem. It is a question of deciding what the page is for and then arranging it to do that, which usually means less on the page rather than more.
What is this
The fastest answer is the work itself. A grid of recent pieces tells a visitor more in one second than any description does, because they can see the subject, the style and the level of finish at once. A page that opens with text is asking to be read before it has earned the attention.
A single line underneath is enough to fill the gaps a picture cannot: what kind of work, how often, and by whom. Keep it plain and specific, which is the description discipline described in the piece on how readers search.
Is it for me
Adult work needs this answered before anything else, both as a courtesy and frequently as a requirement, which is the gate discussion in the piece on age gates. Beyond that, visitors are working out whether the register, subject and explicitness match what they were hoping for.
Being specific costs a little reach and saves everybody's time. Vague framing produces visitors who leave immediately and occasionally leave annoyed, and neither outcome helps.
What do I do next
One clear action. Read the latest chapter, join the list, buy the book. Front pages routinely offer five equally weighted options, and a visitor faced with five choices frequently takes none, which is a well-observed effect and easy to avoid.
The action should be the one you actually want. If the mailing list is the thing that matters, as argued in the piece on publishing without a platform, then that is what the page should lead with, and everything else can sit below it.
What front pages usually put first
A biography, a mission statement, a large logo, or a menu of empty categories. None of these answer any of the three questions, and all of them consume the visitor's attention before the work has been seen. Biographies are worth having and belong on their own page.
Navigation deeper than a couple of levels has the same problem, since a visitor cannot guess where anything is filed. A flat index with search outperforms a category tree for almost every creator-sized site, which is the structure recommended in the piece on one-thumb readers.
Keeping it current
A front page showing work from two years ago tells a visitor the project is over, whether or not it is. Since the recent grid is doing the main job, it has to be recent, and a site that cannot be updated easily will drift out of date within months.
This argues for building something simple enough that updating it is trivial. Elaborate sites are updated less often than plain ones, and an out-of-date elaborate site is worse than a plain current one by a wide margin.
Testing it on somebody
Show the page to somebody who does not know the work and ask what it is, whether it is for them, and what they would click. Ten seconds, no explanation. Almost every creator learns something uncomfortable from this and almost nobody does it.
The same test at phone width is worth running separately, since layouts reflow and the element you put first may not be first any more.
Building a page that orients a stranger
Lead with recent work, add one plain line of description, be specific about what the site contains, offer one clear next action, keep navigation flat, keep it current, and test it on somebody cold. That is a front page doing its job.
Our own approach is described in the editorial principles.