I got to wondering if the home page, the single that we, as Web designers, spend soooooo much time wire framing and designing, has lost its luster. So I started checking our usage reports. Sure enough, the home page of this blog gets represents between 7-10% % of the total traffic in any given month and 6-9% of total entry pages. It makes sense given that most of the traffic comes from the blog’s RSS feed, e-mail updates, social media pages and search engines, all of which direct visitors to specific pages, NOT the home page. The Matrix Group Web site home page gets 28% of total traffic, and that number makes sense, given that many people come to the site to learn more about the company as a result of our direct marketing efforts.
I started checking clients’ usage reports and I found that of all the sites I checked, the results were similar. The home page gets between 17-40% of total traffic, and 15-30% of entry pages.
It turns out that lots of other people are thinking about this phenomenon and some are even declaring that the home page is dead. Rick Stratton from Feed.us says, “(y)our homepage’s homepage is dying” because search engines, social media, RSS are linking directly to content pages.
While I don’t agree that the home page is dead, here’s what I do believe:
- As Web designers, marketers and communicators, we need to give a lot more thought to the user experience on sub-pages.
- We need clear calls to action on sub-pages, not just the home page.
- We need to have a banner ad and sponsorship strategy that incorporates the entire site, not just the home page.
- We need to look at our usage reports regularly to see which pages, topics and headlines are generating traffic
How about you? What are your usage reports telling you? What do you think of the importance of your home page vs. your content pages?
