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That's right. Despite mom's best advice, unfortunately, a lot of people still judge a book by its cover.

What makes a homepage brilliant, and not "blah?" Well, it's really about more than looks along -- it also has to work well . That's why the most brilliant homepages on this list don't just score high in beauty, but also in brains. Get ready to learn about excellent homepage design through these 15 real-life examples!

Elements of a Brilliant Homepage Design

All of the homepage designs shown here utilize a combination of the following elements. Not every page is perfect, but the best homepage designs get many of these right:

• Clearly answers "Who I am," "What I do," and/or "What can you (the visitor) do here." If you're a well-known brand or company (i.e. Coca Cola) you may be able to get away with not having to describe who you are and what you do; but the reality is, most businesses still need to answer these questions so that each visitor knows they are in the "right place." Steven Krugg sums it up best in his best-selling book, Don't Make Me Think. If visitors can't identify what it is you do within seconds, they won't stick around long.
• Resonates with the target audience. A homepage needs to be narrowly focused -- speaking to the right people in their language. The best homepages avoid "corporate gobbledygook," and eliminate the fluff.
• Compelling value-proposition. When a visitor arrives on your homepage, it needs to compel them to stick around. The homepage is the best place to nail your value proposition so that prospects choose to stay on your website and not navigate to your competitors.
• Usability and mobility. All the homepages listed here are highly usable, meaning they are easy to navigate and there aren't "flashy" objects that get in the way of browsing, such as flash banners, animations, pop-ups, or overly-complicated and unnecessary elements. Many of them are also mobile-optimized, which is an incredibly important must-have in today's mobile world.
• Calls-to-action (CTAs). Every homepage listed here effectively uses primary and secondary calls-to-action in order to direct visitors to the next logical step. Examples include "Free Trial," "Schedule a Demo," "Buy Now," or "Learn More." Remember, the goal of the homepage is to compel visitors to dig deeper into your website and move them further down the funnel. CTAs tell them what to do next so they don't get overwhelmed or lost. More importantly, CTA's turn your homepage into a sales or lead-generation engine, and not just brochure-wear.
• Always changing. The best homepages aren't always static. Some of them, like Whitehouse.gov, are constantly changing to reflect the needs, problems, and questions of their visitors. Some homepages also change from A/B testing or dynamic content.
• Great overall design. A well-designed page is important to building trust, communicating value, and navigating visitors to the next step. As such, these homepages effectively use layout, CTA placement, whitespace, colors, fonts, and other supporting elements.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34006/15-Examples-of-Brilliant-Homepage-Design.aspx#ixzz2IvTTgFOf

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Facebook launched a slew of new advertising products today, giving marketers more ways to reach consumers and giving Facebook more ways to make money.

The new products could give Facebook a potential in revenue as it prepares for its IPO this year. The company is developing its payments business but advertising is still the vast majority of its revenue.

The new products, announced at an event in New York City, include new brand pages that are based on the Timeline profiles that the Facebook rolled out recently. Also included are mobile ads, a new Groupon-like Offers product, and new large ads on Facebook’s log-out screen. Brands such as American Express, Kia, Wal-Mart, Aegis Media and 1-800-Flowers are using some of these new Facebook products.

The big change for marketers is that Facebook is turning Facebook pages into Timeline pages, which are basically constantly changing multi-media histories. In the new formate brands can also “pin” content at the top of the Timeline for up to seven days. What that means is that brands will no longer just be posting on a tab or a page. Instead they’ll be creating more of a story-telling format. In other words brands have to think of a deeper story for their company and how to illustrate it for consumers with compelling content, beyond just posting updates once in a while. “We’re really moving away from tabs ,which are very static, to a world where it’s all about what’s fresh and what’s new,” says Clara Shih, CEO ofHearsay Social, a social marketing startup that is a launch partner with Facebook today.

But are brands ready to become story-tellers? Some may be and some may not be yet.”They know it’ll take work to understand this new paradigm,” Shih says. “Not everybody loves change. That’s the thing I find so compelling (about Facebook) which is they’re able to stay relevant by constantly pushing the envelope.” Over time, Shih says, marketers will come around as they have with previous Facebook products.

Other new products: a “Reach Generator” which enables brands to pay more to ensure that their posts get on 75% their fans’ News Feeds. More generally there’s also a new Premium ad system that gives marketers the chance to post ads on new places such as the home page, News Feed and the log-out screen.

Facebook also announced mobile ads that can be placed in users’ News Feeds on mobile devices. The inclusion of ads into the main feed may raise some eyebrows especially if the ads are seen as intrusive. However, with more and more users moving to mobile devices, Facebook needs to develop the monetization piece on mobile. This is likely just the start there. Twitter also just announced promoted Tweets on mobile.

Maybe overlooked in all the discussion over the new advertising formats is theOffers product. Facebook originally released an offers product last year, then dropped it. The new Offers enables companies to share discounts from their Facebook Pages. The Offers can be sent out to consumers on the News Feed or as Sponsored Stories. I think this product will be developed much more in the future. That means new competition for the likes of Groupon and Yelp, which is about to price its IPO this week.

Gamification is one of those big words constantly being thrown around in the social media space. It’s also a trend, like many other trends in social media, which companies are trying to use as the proverbial silver bullet to gain traffic and conversions. While gamification is by no means a quick fix to all problems social, once you understand the science behind it, you see why it works. 

Gabe Zichermann, chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops, led a discussion duringSocial Media Week on this hot button subject and began by making sure the definition was clear:

gamification is the process of using game thinking & mechanics to engage users and to solve problems.

One of the reasons gamification works is because games create a system of constraint. When you set limits, people need to use their own imagination and creativity to reach a goal. People are born with the desire to create and games help to get those creative juices flowing. Additionally, games are intrinsically social and that fact adds to the reasoning behind why it works so well in this case.

Scientifically speaking, gamification works off of fluid intelligence (gF): the human ability to, given a situation you’ve never been in before, solve a problem. Numerous tests have shown that gF helps individuals learn to multitask and learning to multitask helps increase your grey matter. Moreover, people are “wired” to gather pleasure from achievement. In games, the challenge/achievement loop takes place many, many times. This pleasure will also lead people to tell others about their wonderful “game” experience—once again accomplishing a social interaction.

The science behind gamification also explains the division between those who understand this concept & those who are still slow to adopt the theory of using games, when applicable, online. The bifurcation of which we are speaking is essentially generational. Boomers, Gen X-ers & some Gen Y-ers were brought up on a learning system based on crystallized intelligence—the ability to use your memory in solving problems you already know. Crystallized intelligence limits creativity thus limiting the aforementioned challenge/achievement pleasure loop that games provide. The one thing to remember is that, although there may be some generational pushback, gamification techniques still work across all generations. Think about it, who doesn’t like to play a game?

And here’s the perfect example.

When I arrived at the Bloomberg building, I went to the desk to get my badge for the day and was given the directions to get to the room where the panel was being held. I was prompted to take the green elevator to the sixth floor, go through the atrium to the next elevator bank, take one of those elevators to 28, perform seven barrel rolls under razor wire while encountering enemy fire and go down the stairs to the 27th floor where I would be greeted by coffee, tea, orange juice and various breakfast snacks before the beginning of the panel. OK, so I may have added the barrel rolls, razor wire and enemy fire, but the point is a link (Legend of Zelda pun fully intended) as made between the experience of getting to the conference room and a system of gaming and achievement. The social aspect of this was expressed through the conversations before and after the discussion as well as online. Games and social interactions work.

Plus, I still say Gabe set up hat whole series of entry to the room so when you ask him, and he says he didn’t, feel free to accept his humility.