An Easy, Affordable Home Page Up-Do

Speaking of nurturing your web site…even if you don’t have much (any) budget for adding content right now, or are in the throes of a big redesign, don’t neglect your home page! Just mine what you’ve already got by featuring different content on your home page through links. If you’re a Wily Dog, you’ve stored some tasty bones to dig up for hungry days like these. Time to get scratchin’.

It’s tempting, I know, when you’re all caught up in the next best thing to just wait until the new whiz-bang site is ready, then hope to blow away your visitors. Worse, you might want to stick up “Coming Soon” or “Just you wait, this site’s gonna rock!” posters everywhere. But your visitors don’t care what your editorial calendar looks like. They ALL live in the here and now. Show them something worth their while right now or they’re outta here.

To keep your home page dynamic , you don’t really even have to innovate. If you designed it correctly (see Placemat or Buffet post), you should be able to swap out headlines and links to pull more of the site’s existing pages forward. Pages they might not have seen yet or content that deserves further promotion. Mine your content by linking to deeper pages from the home page with icons, buttons, photos, etc. Do this often…once a quarter doesn’t count. At the very least, pull intriguing lead sentences to the home page with a “more…” link.  

Has your company or product recently been promoted or reviewed on another site or other media? Stick a link on your home page. (A quick way to sniff around for buzz on you: Google “links: [your URL]” and you’ll get results showing where on the web your site has been mentioned or linked to.) Anytime you get a nod, it’s a chance to show your visitors you’re a dynamic force. All it takes is a short headline and a link: “See us in Top New Widgets magazine!” Don’t bury these treats in your “News” section, howl about them up front.

The worse thing you can do is treat your web site like a museum, where everything stays all nice and pretty and untouchable. Yes, you need the standard info in the obvious places, but if you want repeat traffic, make it worth the trip! Wily Dogs don’t have much patience for museums…neither should you.

Is Your Web Site an Orphan?

Think back to when you first launched your web site. The birthing metaphor is apt to describe the longer-than-expected gestation, then the emergency-room rush near the launch date. By the time the site goes live, everyone’s sick of the wait and just wants to see the darn thing out there in the world in all its adorable glory.

At this critical juncture, many companies do a funny thing. They abandon their site. Oh, they might spend hours pouring over page hits and statistics, but it’s easy to think that’s the same thing as working on your site. (Small companies tend to reach this stage with alarming speed. “I built a darn web site,” they think, “why aren’t new customers beating a path to my door?”) So all these orphaned web sites are just left in the cold.

Fact is, you can’t just shove a web site out on the street and expect it to attract hot prospects like a charm school valedictorian. You have to promote it, check in often, feed it a steady diet of NEW and RELEVANT CONTENT, and (can’t stress this enough) make some noise to drum up traffic.  

Lots of ways to do this: First, make sure you keep the new content coming, to satisfy your customers who’ve actually made you a resource for improving their lives, solving their problems, getting their daily humor or wisdom, or whatever your web site is designed to deliver. Content-rich web sites are the ones that get used, and the ones that sell product. “Tell me something I don’t know” is the given expectation, and if you can deliver, bingo! Bookmarked! Sold! Blogged!

Second, promote the URL not just as a rote addition to any ad or packaging, but offer it as a solution to a problem or connect it to a topic of interest for whoever’s reading the ad. Landing pages are a great, inexpensive way to max out your ad relevancy, add content to your site, and grab a target audience’s attention/loyalty.

An example: Say you own Jen’s Bike Shop. You want to advertise your new top-of-the-line mountain bike in the local press. So you do up a nice quarter-page ad showing the tricked out bike, and you add: “Visit www.jensbikeshop.com/totallywickedtracks for a list of Jen’s favorite trails.”  

Readers go to the landing page, which is of course on your site, and you give them great info on trails they might not know about, tell them how incredibly well this new bike handles on these trails, and lots of free tips. Link back to other pages that have relevance to such a reader, and see what happens. My guess is you’ve gone a long way in building trust and esteem–after all, you gave away free information they can’t get anywhere else! And now readers have a reason to walk into your shop for a test ride.

Main idea: Keep your web site vibrant and relevant, not on life support. And for heaven’s sake, don’t abandon it. Launching it is just the beginning.

Your Home Page: Placemat or Buffet?

It’s time to take a hard look at your home page, where your customers and prospects come knocking, hungry for information and answers. So when they get to http://www.YourCompany.com, do they find a placemat or a buffet?

If you have what I call a “placemat” home page, you’re missing huge opportunities. A “placemat” is a big photo (or worse, an ad!) that fills up the monitor, some navigation, and maybe a clickable icon or two. But front and center is a big beautiful shot of the product or lifestyle you are so in love with (or that you paid so much for) that you want to share it with the world! So you “set” your home page like a table for a special occasion, all pretty but not too cluttered. It’s well balanced, tasteful, and conveys your company image.

The problem with these lovely scenes is that they are freeloaders on your marketing budget, contributing nada to your potential earnings! Plus, they annoy your visitors. They know you sell cars—do you have to hit them over the head with one? Here you’ve spent $$$$$ for a web site, and the first thing you do is bore your visitors to death. Or worse, they don’t see what they need, so they leave.

But what about all that slick navigation you draped across the top or sides of the page? Necessary, but do you really expect your visitors to always recognize the path to exactly what they need through one- or two-word clues? Nav bars and menus by nature are telegraphic: Contact Us, About, Special Offers…some of those are sufficient no-brainers. But what about these gold mines: Products, Services, What’s New, Join Us…yeah, a visitor can see what they are, but why aren’t you telling them why they should click here now? Because you don’t have the space. You don’t want to clutter your placemat!

Which is why your home page needs to be a buffet. By “buffet” I mean you set out all kinds of goodies as a bountiful feast so your visitors are immediately enticed, engaged, and hungry to dig around. Most importantly, if they come looking for specific info, you can show them exactly where to find it because you’re not held hostage by a two-word limit. Instead of tapping out Morse code you can shout out all the great news and ideas you spent months putting together for their edification!

A hard-working home page has smaller photos (add a “click to enlarge” link if you want), headlines, summary blurbs, and links, all arranged in a grid and grouped by topic or subsets, so visitors can scan your page, find tasty bits, and dig in. When you set out your buffet, however, you still need to exercise restraint. Don’t tell stories in their entirety. Brief but clear summaries with relevant headlines should then link to site pages for the full story.

News media and variety show web sites are the best examples of this approach. You can learn lots by visiting sites for CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, Oprah, Martha Stewart, and so on. Just be warned, as you “research” you will probably get sucked in to clicking on stories and articles that pique your interest. Great! Just go back and look at how they did it. Then load your home page with all the goodies in your web site content.