What should be on the home page?

[goatsey]

So I'm collaborating with @Dinocanid on a variety of things for Foodbabs and I was wondering what the general public thinks about home pages.

As this article helpfully explains, your home page is like a storefront window, a peek inside your website. And like a shopper looking in a window, a website visitor can make a very quick decision about whether or not there's anything to be gained from going inside -- just by skimming over your home page.

That being said, what do you look for on the home page of a pet game?

[CuddlySpider]

I wonder this too at times. When I feel stuck on deciding what to put on it, I look to other pet sites. Many have all or some of these:

Newsfeed
Random Pet
Random Avatar
Newest Users
Some buttons to social media or donate button or merch shop.

There are sometimes some other things but they tend to be more specific to that site's game play.

I Like to think of the home page as both an introduction to new unregistered users and an informational center for registered users. So visitors can see updates that have happened, some quick idea on what active user avatars look like, what the pets may look like, etc. So the can get a general quick taste of the aesthetics and activity. While for registered users it's a good reference to quickly see if anything news have been posted and even see names of new users if the with to great them and welcome them to the site.

I hope this helps.

[Kesstryl]

I always look for game play screen shots, and if it's a pet site, I look for samples of pets.  I need to like the artwork, and I like to see how the game is played before I decide to sign up and give it a try.  If a game lacks those two things, I will generally pass on signing up because I have a lot of things to do in a day, and don't have time for guessing about games.