Home truths: your homepage isn’t your website’s front door any more

Alice Elliott

Back in the old days it was common to think the homepage was the front door of your website. It was the first thing people looked at when they arrived there, so the answer was to pack as much as you could into it to reassure the visitor they’ve come to the right place.

But now with the rise of more sophisticated search engine use, this isn’t the case any more. Visitors can enter a website from any page, as long as it’s live. And this is done through links and keywords.

Let’s look at links first

Links are like doorways from one website to another. If they are left unlocked (do-follow) they allow both humans (visitors) and search engines (spiders) to go through. Locked (no-follow) links allow people to visit another website, but prevent the spiders from indexing it. Whether you leave your doors locked or unlocked depends how much you care about where they lead to and what happens on the other side!

Links are a vital mechanism for gaining traffic back to your website. They also allow you to pinpoint exactly where you want your visitors to go, for example, to your blog to read your latest post, a squeeze page to sign up to your newsletter, or a sales page to buy your product.

I also mentioned keywords

Search engines match up search requests with specific keywords, and if that particular keyword is present in a specific page in your website, the visitor will be directed there. It’s like a game of snap, and search engines always look for the most appropriate match, which certainly won’t be your homepage.

Therefore to take advantage of this phenomenon, it’s wise to think which keyword is the most suitable for that webpage, and how to can attract the right kind of visitor or customer. This is the basis of search engine optimisation (SEO), which is the practice of appropriately populating a webpage with keywords and links to make it more attractive to the search engines.

Create mini-homepages

Think how you can adapt each webpage as a sort of mini-homepage. Whenever the visitor lands there, they need to be able to be reassured they’ve come to the right place, recognise the subject or purpose of that page, and understand what they need to do before leaving.

A canny webpage will take advantage of the visitor by not only providing valuable information, but will collect their details for further communication, entice them to share the contents on social media, or guide them further into the website. Getting a visitor to stay or explore further prevents them from ‘bouncing’, a term that refers to when a visitor doesn’t do anything or leaves immediately. Bounce rates in analytics are an indicator of how good you are at encouraging your web visitors to interact and respond appropriately.

What’s the homepage for?

Don’t assume your website’s homepage is redundant. Think of it as the front door only for posh or first time visitors. It needs to be welcoming, explanatory, directional and reassuring. It’s like entering a fancy hotel’s foyer with a smiling receptionist guiding you where you need to go, and the bell hop taking your bags to your room.

Whereas some people don’t need to enter that way. You may know more a direct door into the hotel, understand how to negotiate the back stairs, and get to your room more quickly and efficiently. Or your friends may know the extension number direct to your hotel room without having to go through the telephone exchange.

When not to use the homepage

One thing that is terrible, especially in online advertising, is when the link directs the visitor to the wrong page rather than the correct sales or squeeze page. For example, the advert offers a good deal on some garden furniture, but the link either goes to the homepage of the business, or to another page that has nothing to do with the product. In both cases this will result in no sale and a bounce.

Direct your visitor to your homepage rather than the more appropriate webpage, and you’ll lose them. They will be confused because it won’t match their expectations. They will have to negotiate the navigation options and may get distracted on the way. They will lose patience because they will have to work to get what they want, rather than having it given to them directly. You will lose their trust and willingness to do business with you.

A website is like an open house, with many doors, so make sure all of them are welcoming and can guide the visitor where they want to go and give the information they want quickly, easily and efficiently. And come to terms with the fact that the only access isn’t via the homepage any more.

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About the author: Alice Elliott is a Digital Marketer whose award winning Fairy Blog Mother blog provides simple, jargon-free, highly visual WordPress training for beginner and post-beginner bloggers. She specialises in before-and-after screen-shot e-courses that make no assumption of prior knowledge, constructively beginning at Blogging Level 0 to ensure a good foundational training. She is well known for her ability to “explain things really simply”, relating her teaching to each learner according to their lifestyle and ability.