I have a domain-specific, specialized search engine. The home page of the site presents the results of a default query which makes sense in my context. In other words, when a user lands on my page, he immediately sees the result of an interesting query.
My other option is to present the user a very simplistic welcome page with a textbox and button (like the modern general-purpose search engines of today) and force him to interact with the site before he sees any results. The logic that someone who issues at least one query and interact with the site will likely to issue other queries as well.
Can anyone tell me about the pros and cons of those two different default behaviors?
My object is make people interact with the site, issue queries and share the result of those queries with other people. I believe the answer depends on the nature of my users. I'd like to hear people with experiences on this matter.
What I have read about these sort of user-interface questions is 'let the evidence show you that way'.
Several ideas come to mind,
Label your site as 'beta', then
Track the users follow-on behavior. Rethink, redesign, remold your system to optimize the results (which you are so secretive about ;-) ) that canbe achieved.
I hope this helps!