What should internal "home pages" and "index pages" be called?

Question

I'm trying to figure out what these respective web pages are called in relation to the larger architecture. Here's a simplified architecture diagram:

I understand that Home at the top is properly called the "home page" or "index page." What about the others highlighted in yellow?

1. /Contests is essentially an index of the various contests.
2. /Contest-A is like the home page of a mini-site devoted to just that contest, but still within the larger context of the whole website.
3. /Entries is an index of all the entries in the contest (could be a list or a gallery).

Many colleagues are in the habit of calling each of these "landing pages," but I find this to be far too vague: according to Seth Godin, Wikipedia, and Vertster, a landing page is any page that people land on after clicking a link from an ad, search results page, or the like. So, any page is a landing page. Therefore, "landing page" signifies nothing with respect to architecture.

I have been calling the internal mini-site directory page a "home" page, as in "the contests home," or "the Contest A home page." Then I have been calling the list of entries the "entries index." However, I am troubled when I read Wikipedia's definition of Home Page: A home page or index page has various related meanings to do with web sites: It is also usually the first page that the link/site takes the user to. This definition conflates the two terms, which may be perfectly valid. It also says "usually the first page."

So, I wonder, what would I correctly call the following pages so that everyone will 1) understand them, and 2) find the terms simple and universal enough to adopt themselves?

1. /Contests
2. /Contest-A
3. /Entries

I'm looking for references to both common and accepted usage.

Answer 1

Index page is a relative term. It can refer to the homepage of your website, it can also refer to the main page of any section of your website. Index page simply means - page that lists out (indexes) the summary of (or links to) all the other important pages within that section. This section can be your "website" or any other sub-section of your website, in this example "Contests" and "Contest-A".

Home page normally refers to the main page of your website. And it's a good practice not to use this word when referring to other pages, because it will only confuse users.

From your diagram above, depending on the structure of the /Entries page, it could be an index page or just a normal content page. Normally, if it has a single page then it's considered a content page, but if the section has more than one page, and this page lists out summary of other pages then it's considered an index page.

As for landing Page, yes it's just a page that user lands when he first visits your website. It could be a direct visit by typing your website, then the landing page is your homepage. Or it could be via ads on Search Engines, which would bring you to a targeted and specially designed sales landing page.

Answer 2

OP's graphic is a tree diagram, within which every "box" is normally called a node.

If a node has one or more nodes below it, it's called a branch [node], otherwise it's a leaf [node].

When referring to a pair of nodes connected vertically, the upper one is often called a parent node, and the lower a child node. The topmost node (the only one without a "parent") is the root [node].

Answer 3

If you can use the page name explicitly, it is immediately clear which page you are talking about.

For example, you could refer to the entries page as "Contest A/B/C Entries page." There doesn't need to be a hierarchical label applied. Similarly, "The Contests Page" and "Contest A/B/C Home."

Universally, "The Contests Page", "A Contest Home page", and "A Contest Entries page."

I know you were concerned about the definition of a home page:

[A home page] is also usually the first page that the link/site takes the user to.

Since "A Contest page" is, by your description, the index/home page of a mini site, you're covered in calling it a Home page.

Answer 4

We use:

• Home page
• Section page (Contests)
• Subsection page (Contest-A)
• Content page (entries)

The reason for this is that the terms section/subsection implies the level of hierarchy, and pages of the same type almost always follow a consistent design.

Answer 5

Unfortunately I am not able to indicate any convention used outside the office that is also suitable for the lay.

You could standardize what you call it and educate people.
We use a tiered naming convention that scales nicely:

• Top level page
• List view (index page)
• Details Page

This works on many levels (it scales)

• Top level News/Article/Contest
• Contests list view page
• Contest detail page
• Entries list view page
• Entry detail page

What you are trying to communicate is a hierarchy and different slices of it.

Answer 6

Your contests page could be a section, category or division. As mentioned above, module could work as well. It would seem to me that a contest item could simply be a contest and a contest entry could also be labeled as such.

So your site could be divided up into sections, and those sections could contain items that were of that sections type (The contests section contains contest items) and then each of those items could contain different types of item data (such as entries)

So to simplify that explanation:

Site -> Section -> Item -> Item Data

(one -> many)

Answer 7

I have always used hub, which has some logic behind it. A hub — by definition — is a central, or focal point, acting as a pivot. Hub pages certainly sound like they are hierarchically deeper within the information architecture. They provide hubs of information.

It is also a term that has widely been accepted by search engine marketers¹. Not that this should influence you to refer to them as hubs alone; there is definitely a reference point there, which holds some weight.

It is also worth noting that there is a website called HubPages², and this, along with similar sites such as Squidoo³ are referred to as hub pages. These are sites where users can effectively create a page (usually around a single subject) which act as a hub of information with plenty of outbound links to other pages and/or sites.

Last, but not at all least, Google has referred to hub sites⁴ [which can be page(s)] as a method of creating quality, inbound links to improve search performance.

So, to answer you question fully, I would call your pages the following:

• Contests hub
  • Contest A Page
    • Entries Page

The logic behind this is — without seeing your content structure — the Contests have a single hub page, which would have information about each of the contests (A, B and C) which will also have deep links to deeper pages under the hub, such as the entries pages.

---

• ¹ ClickScience Internet Marketing Glossary definition
• ¹ SEOMoz calls its internal home pages ‘hubs’
• ¹ Search Engine Land article about Google launching hub site
• ² HubPages
• ³ Squidoo
• ⁴ Creating Google hub site

Answer 8

Although I know you found 'landing page' to be too vague, I think it has the implied meaning that it is a parent with child pages, not just any old page you can navigate to.

With that said, some other options might be "start page" or "section home", assuming you're looking for terms more user-friendly than the standard UX jargon of branch and node or parent and child.

Answer 9

From what I see of your information architecture diagram, The information flow is quite obvious as it clearly highlights the relationship between the different categories and sub categories in the site. I would recommend just going for the naming convention as it is.

I am not a fan of using the term landing page for contest-A, contest-B and contest-C since it gives the impression that these are the only entry points to the system and also raises the question if the secondary pages of contest-A,contest-B and contest-C cannot be reached directly (via an internal search result) or via some search engine (assuming the entire site was indexed).

I am also wary about using the term Home page as it is generally used as the central point of focus of a site from which the site drills down or diverges into its constituents and multiple home pages would cause confusion if trying to communicate the information architecture.

Answer 10

On naming conventions...

You'd find regularly that when your site grows, as it seems with yours that those pages have an essence of their own. Some times, big sites like The Huffington Post or other news sites, will even color-code those sections (as the Huffington post does). @MattLavoie, mentions that:

Site -> Section -> Item -> Item Data

However, right after section you can get easily lost, as Item could be anything.

CMS's like Joomla used to have:

Site Home -> Section Home -> Category Home -> Item

Taking the concept furhter away...

But, maybe you don't want to categorize something, and your becomes a home for a group of people... some people go from

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/politics to http://politics.huffingtonpost.com

A subtle change that enables the site to have a new home for a subdomain. But from there you could add sections again, but after that it becomes confusing for the people like:

http://subdomain.domain.com/section/category/
                           ^       ^        ^
                           |       |        |
                           |       |    category
                           |       |      home
                           |   subdomain
                           |    section
                           |     home
                       subdomain
                         home

To conclude

You might want to keep a balance between depth and volume so that you don't end up with many confused users. If you follow this rule you won't need to name many section or category homes... and you'll have an Information Architecture that is user friendly and intuitive.

At the end if you have a sub-page that has the worthiness of becoming a sub-domain do it and call it subsite home :)

Answer 11

I think the biggest problem here is that there is no accepted term for a second tier root page, let alone one that makes sense to lay users.

Educating your colleagues away from their misuse of the phrase "landing page" is important - to use it in that context is particularly misleading and will only cause confusion if they have to work with outside professionals or other people in the industry.

However, it's going to be different to provide them with an alternative - without an established convention, you're going to have to either use a more technical term or come up with your own name. Using Home or Index is not a bad choice, especially in the context of a mini-site. Where those terms fall down is when the page can clearly be referred to the "real" home page. Personally I would prefer the term sub-index, though that's a catch-all phrase that could account for things below the second tier of the architecture.

Section index or category index also make sense, but again depend on your architecture. If they actually are index pages for sections or categories, then it's an accurate term. Otherwise, this might again cause confusion by conflating their purpose with their position in the IA.

Ultimately without a convention to refer to, the terminology you use will have to be dictated by your site's specific IA. Use whichever term you feel is appropriate (as long as it's not landing page!).

Answer 12

What about "main page"

So you would have:

• The contests main page
• The main page for the June contest
• The main page for the June contest entries