Web-design / UI advice

Question

I'm working on a website on a Fmylife style.
Now the homepage is the page showing the list of the latest posts. But I think there is a problem with that: The most "interesting" page is the one showing the top posts of the last days, but that page has very few visits compared to the main page. I suppose that's only because the main page is the "default" one.

So, I've been thinking of making a home page that shows no posts (only one at the top of the page) but 4 big buttons showing the visitors what are the options to browse the content.

But I'm also afraid that most users will not click any option and leave the site having seen no posts. So I don't know what to do.

Obviously I have no idea of what will be good from a usability/efficiency point of view.
Maybe a mix of the two options will be the best, but I don't know how to mix them.

Any advice or idea will be greatly appreciated.

The current home page looks like this: http://soquestion.latest.secretsapp.appspot.com/latest
The new home page would look like this: http://soquestion.latest.secretsapp.appspot.com/

Answer 1

I'd do it in a third way yet: shrink the "new" homepage contents' (esp. the very big "buttons") and thereby gain some space to show just a few each of the most-recent, last-days tops, and last-weeks tops -- each with a clear ending in a "show me more of these" buttons. I would think that should be maximally enticing to new visitors, which I assume is your main target.

Also, the "tell your secret" button should be placed well apart from the rest, IMHO, probably next to the openid-login button, because its functionality is so different from the others' "show me some of these" and more related to the login (i.e., the user must be prepared to interact with the site, or else it makes no sense for them to press these two buttons -- and I imagine new users will want to browse around a bit before they start adding content to the site or want to log into it).

Answer 2

A good rule of thumb is to limit the number of times a user needs to click or the number of pages they need to navigate in order to access content. Limiting things to one post on the homepage with "four big buttons" for them to browse content breaks that rule.

You have to face the possibility that some users are only interested in seeing the latest posts (rather than what you call the "most 'interesting' page."

If you still want to try this out, I recommend creating the alternate site and running an A-B test to see which performs better. But just like a blog, more people will visit the home page (landing page) than the rest of the site because that's all they really care about.