Once the initial LoFi wireframe layout has been agreed, and there is consensus over potentially contentious issues such as how big the logo should be and where on the page the navigation should appear, we start to look at the page template requirements. We categorise page layouts into one of three types; target, section, and the home page.
Common mistakes
Starting the visual design with the homepage is a classic mistake that we now avoid. Homepages should evolve iteratively as the rest of the site comes together.
These days we'll start with the design of something deeper: a news or product page. There's a good reason for this approach: as this layout will generally represent 75-80% of the pages your visitors look at. Welcome to the concept of the target page…
The target page
In many ways, the target page is the most important page layout to get right. If you're an ecommerce website, it's the page that displays the product's details, along with that all important Buy button. If you're running a news site, it's the page that contains the in-depth story. Target pages tend to do well with search engines at they're normally keyword rich, so they're likely to be the first page on your site that your new visitors will see. Regular visitors will generally come in through the home page. First timers will often come in through a target page.
Section pages
Section pages exist with one purpose in mind - to point visitors to a target page. Often comprising of a list of product summaries, or of headlines and snippets of the story or article, they are the pages that visitors will see while navigating around your site. As the content on section pages often changes quite frequently, they are also quite likely to do well in search engine results pages.
The homepage
The homepage is the only page you can almost guarantee your visitors will see at least once. For regular visitors who may have book marked your site, or for new visitors who know your sites' root URL, it will be the first page they encounter. Thinking of this page as a "Super Section Page" works well for sites that have a lot of content, and while smaller sites will often use this page to represent much of their content, care is required to ensure that the page doesn't become too busy.