I have been (unsuccessfully) looking for some research that supports / rejects (or even discusses) the hypothesis that:
Once a user has entered a website a significant percentage of them do not return to the homepage.
Is this hypothesis true for all type of site (large corporate brochureware sites, blogs, ecommerce...) or is it only true for specific web areas / demographics. Or is the hypothesis completely false in all cases? What percentage of website visitors return to the homepage once they're already within the site?
This has basically come from a discussion about whether or not we can do away with homepages for a properly indexed website; users should find what they need directly from a search engine via good architecture and be able to navigate around from there to various sections of a website without ever needing to visit the homepage. The question then was: do we need a homepage at all? The obvious answer is "yes, or course you still need one". But once they're in the website do users ever return / visit the homepage?
Answer
It heavily depends on the site content and architecture. I believe it is very dangerous to try and make conclusions using statistics "on average" (moreover, I'm not sure such statistics even exist).
In my experience no matter how well your site is indexed and how many good entry points there are, it is always better to have a home page than not to have one.
I've been witness to the following: There was a blog service where the home page was needed only once - when new users signed up. We've decided to get rid of this "useless" page. As for new users, we've decided to allow them to first write a post and then create an account in a javascript pop-out.
Pitifully, the consequences were surprisingly terrible - user database growth reduced drastically and I came to the conclusion that a home page is a very important thing.
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