People won't hang around on your homepage...
- 26 April 2019
Make sure each page in your website has something valuable to offer your readers.
A web page exists to provide something that's useful or interesting to visitors.
Often when people land on a website, they're arriving with a specific task in mind. They won't look at all the other things your website has to offer. They'll be clicking deeper into your website in no time. All the effort you spent lovingly crafting your homepage is lost. People just want to get their task done, find their information.
This cannot be helped, it's just natural behaviour. But take this behaviour into account when designing your website - you must ensure that your website's purpose and content are clear on all pages.
If your web page doesn't have that, then you must fix that problem before you worry about how it looks. What are you offering to your visitors? Why is it worth their time to visit your website? Focus on that before you move on to how it should look.
If you are using advertising on your website, use the 80/20 rule - 80% editorial to 20% advertising.
We know that no one would turn on the TV if it were just commercials, and no programmes, or buy a magazine if it were just ads, and no articles. Just the same, a website also has to have more than adverts if it's to be successful.
This is also very useful to remember for email marketing and your newsletters or email campaigns - 80% editorial to 20% advertising. The best and most well-read newsletters are those that offer something of value in every newsletter, something the reader can take away with them and almost start using straight away. It may take awhile to find that angle in some industries but keep thinking, keep looking for that valuable angle.