Creating an Effective Home Page

From the article:

At the heart of every site redesign are two questions: What should be on the home page? What is the home page's purpose? Answers vary based on your business model, breadth of products/services, and customers. In general, a home page should answer the following questions:

• What does your company do?
• What is your company's breadth of products/services?
• What are the top categories/products/services I'm likely to be interested in? What's new on the site, or what promotions are running?
• How do I quickly get to the categories I want to browse?

Although no one home page can fit all, here's a checklist to figure out what should be on your home page.