People can begin from any page on your site

- Think about how most people are going to find your site. Unless you have really good name recognition and a massive marketing budget, it's likely that they'll come to you from a search engine or a link on another site. That means the first page they see will be somewhere deep within the site, rather than the homepage. So although the homepage is a good place to let people know what the site's about, it's not the only place that you should that. Every page has to make it clear what the site is about, where the visitor is within the site, and what they can do from that point. How do you go about doing that? We already talked about how the navigation elements of the page can set the scene, letting visitors know what's available to them.

The other parts of the page also tell a story about the site and its contents. In this chapter, we'll cover the elements that every page should have to help visitors know where they are and what they can do. Once people get to your site, they'll need to know how it's structured, so that they can work their way around it. Some pages on the site act as signposts pointing the way by showing summaries of content. This would be your homepage, landing pages, and category pages. Other pages contain more detailed information. These would be detail pages, product pages, and forms. This chapter also talks about how to lead people through the site with progressive navigation, and how to arrange your content depending upon visitor's tasks.

In subsequent chapters, we'll call out the specific things you should do for your homepage, category and landing pages, detail and product pages, and for forms. But for now, let's focus on the things that every page should do for your visitors.