As marketers planning and developing websites, we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about our home pages. What should be included? What should be left out? What sort of first impression are we making and how quickly can we get our visitors where we want them to go?
In a recent post covering a thought-provoking presentation by author and Web Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Kaushik explains:
“Fewer and fewer consumers are coming in via the homepage…every page of your Website must now be considered a homepage. The hours spent tinkering on your current homepage needs to shift into ensuring that every page is a brilliant representation of the keywords and external links that drove someone to your site.”
Furthermore, many of the most savvy marketers are taking advantage of blogging and the myriad other social media opportunities that take place completely outside of the website.
What do you think? Has the home page lost its importance? What can companies do to develop a more meaningful web experience for their customers – both on and off the home page – and even the website itself?
David Fabbri is Creative Director of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by David)
markh on April 18, 2008
I agree that the home page is not a relevant as it was several years ago. It is still important as an identity for a company or brand. However, the landscape is changing with dynamic search and the increased use of landing pages and micro-sites as portals to access information leading to the home pages diminished importance.
Scott_L on April 21, 2008
Agreed – if you are doing your job with driving traffic to your website using blogs, SEM, social media etc., people will enter your site from many places – each entry point has to represent your brand well. Every ad agency in Chicago and elsewhere should be discussing this with their clients – including LoSasso Advertising – yet nearly everyone is still behind the curve on this idea, except the bleeding edge marketers.
Don on November 5, 2008
This is especially true for websites that are made to highlight products or media content.
A potential customer might visit a home page to find out more information about a business, but there is no way to highlight your products in enough detail on the home page.
When a customer is doing research they should be able to go directly to information about the product or service they are shopping for.
Any extra effort hunting down information on a website will ultimately create missing high value, highly targeted opportunities.