Goodbye Home Page, Hello Landing Pages: Why driving website traffic to your home page is a bad idea
With home page bounce rates at 48.7% across the board, visitor conversion is and will be the biggest focus in online marketing in 2007 and 2008. Remember when getting a prominent domain name was more important than the upcoming 2008 United States presidential race? Well the death of the home page is near. Home pages, the long-time favorite direct response mechanism, are dying a slow, painful death. The reasons make sense…let’s take a quick look.
#1 Know your audience
Universally dropping site visitors to your home page is like using a bass boat for a deep sea fishing expedition. Although it may get the job done in ideal conditions, 8 out of 10 times the poor little bass boat and its passengers will become victims of the sea. The same holds true for your home page – it’s a starting point into everything you do. But that’s not what your visitors want. They want you to know exactly what they want and demonstrate a compelling reason why they should consider you for it. Enter landing pages. Landing pages direct site visitors to the resources they want immediately. It’s like you know who they are…and you should.
#2 Talk to your audience
Creating a compelling message, talking 1-on-1 with your audience, is nearly impossible on your home page. You can generalize, but again, your audience doesn’t want generalities. They want answers, confirmation that you have what they need. Do everything you can to connect with your audience in the first 8 seconds of their visit, or ask your competitors for co-op advertising dollars.
#3 Make sure your offer is compelling
In general, people are lazy, and that’s fine so long as we know this fact when marketing to them. So don’t make them work to find what they’re looking for – don’t dump them on your home page. Relate to them and then ask for the next step without invading their privacy. Most importantly, make your landing page your landing page and not another home page. Stay focused on your audience!
#4 Measure the results
Bounce rates on your landing pages should be around 55-60%. “Ok, smarty pants, why would I want to use landing pages with bounce rates higher than home pages?” The answer is simple. When users abandon your home page, it’s because they have nothing to say “yes” to. More importantly, they have nothing to say “no” to. As a result, you have no meaningful data to improve upon – no idea of how to convert that visitor into a customer/client. When they abandon your landing page you gave them something to say no to. In other words, it’s useful data. You can now use alternate landing pages to improve your bounce and conversion rates.
#5 Prune and repeat
There are lots of new tools out to measure landing page effectiveness. Consider multivariate or a/b split testing software to do this. Google Analytics offers both free of charge. Now that we’ve got meaningful data, prune what’s not working and repeat what is.
Next time you consider directing site visitors to your home page, consider the true cost(s) of doing so. Create landing pages, make sure your offer is compelling, measure the results and continually work to improve the results. At least you’ll have a true measure of performance. Remember, converting site visitors into customers or clients or loyal advocates is paramount to growing your business.