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<span class="stag">Field notes · Anuj Kumar Sahu</span>
<h1 class="stitle">YOUR HOMEPAGE<br>IS NOT THE<br><span class="blu">FRONT DOOR.</span></h1>
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<p>Open your analytics and find the report that shows which page people arrived on. In Google Analytics it is under Reports, Engagement, Landing page. Sort it by sessions and look at the top of the list.</p>
<p>For most of the sites we audit, the homepage is somewhere between a fifth and a third of arrivals. Everything else lands somewhere deeper. A service page, a blog post, an old case study nobody has looked at since it went up.</p>
<p>That number surprises people, because of how the site was built. The homepage got the planning, the three rounds of feedback and the argument about the hero image. The pages underneath got whatever was left of the budget. Then two thirds of the traffic walked in through them.</p>
<p>Someone arriving on a deep page has never seen your homepage and probably never will. They have one page to decide whether you are worth contacting. If that page was built as a supporting document, it will not do it.</p>
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<div class="vline"><span class="vn">01</span> Most visitors enter below the homepage, not through it</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">02</span> They judge you on the page they land on, alone</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">03</span> Those pages usually got the least attention when the site was built</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">04</span> Nobody notices, because the homepage is what everyone reviews</div>
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<p><a class="magnet" href="/contact/">Get the free site audit <span>›››</span></a></p>
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<div class="astat"><div class="big">2/3</div><div class="desc">of arrivals typically enter somewhere other than the homepage</div></div>
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<span class="stag">What goes missing</span>
<h2 class="stitle">WHAT WEBSITE<br>LANDING PAGES<br><span class="yel">LEAVE OUT.</span></h2>
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<p>A homepage usually does four jobs at once. It says who you are, shows that other people trust you, explains what you sell, and gives one clear next step.</p>
<p>Deep pages tend to do the third one only. They describe the service in detail and stop. Everything else was handled upstairs, on a page this visitor never opened.</p>
<p>So the person reading has the what and none of the rest. No sense of whether you are two people or forty. No indication of whether anyone has hired you for this before. No price, no range, no example. And at the bottom, often, nothing at all. The page simply ends.</p>
<p>That is the real failure. Not an ugly page or a slow one. A page that answers the question it was written to answer and then abandons the person holding it.</p>
<p>Website landing pages have to be self-contained, because that is how they are actually read.</p>
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<div class="astat"><div class="big">04</div><div class="desc">jobs a homepage does; deep pages usually do one of them</div></div>
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<span class="stag">Where to start</span>
<h2 class="stitle">FIX FIVE PAGES,<br>NOT <span class="blu">FIFTY.</span></h2>
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<p>The temptation is to rewrite the whole site. Do not. Traffic is never spread evenly, and on most sites the top five entry pages carry the large majority of arrivals.</p>
<p>Take that list, ignore the long tail, and work on five pages. It is one afternoon rather than one quarter, and it covers most of the people walking in.</p>
<p>Two things to watch while you read the report. First, your contact or thank-you page may appear near the top. That is not an entry, that is people returning, so skip it. Second, if a blog post is in your top five, it is doing more sales work than any service page you own and almost certainly has no path from it to anything you sell.</p>
<p>Fix that one first.</p>
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<div class="astat"><div class="big">05</div><div class="desc">pages usually cover the large majority of arrivals on a small site</div></div>
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<span class="stag">The checklist</span>
<h2 class="stitle">WHAT EVERY<br>PAGE NEEDS<br><span class="yel">ON ITS OWN.</span></h2>
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<p>Six things, and none of them need a designer.</p>
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<div class="vline"><span class="vn">01</span> One line near the top saying who you are and where you work. A stranger should not have to click to find out.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">02</span> Proof above the halfway point. A named client, a result, a review. Not a logo wall at the bottom.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">03</span> A number. A starting price, a range, or a real worked example.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">04</span> One next step, repeated twice. Once early for the person who is already sold, once at the end for the person who read it all.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">05</span> A phone number and an email in the text, not only in a form. Some people will not fill in a form.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">06</span> A link to two related pages, so the page is not a dead end for someone who is interested but not ready.</div>
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<p>Read each page as though you have never heard of the company. If you cannot work out what to do next without scrolling back to the menu, the page is not finished.</p>
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<div class="astat"><div class="big">06</div><div class="desc">things to add, none of which need a redesign</div></div>
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<span class="stag">What to do this week</span>
<h2 class="stitle">ONE AFTERNOON,<br><span class="blu">FIVE PAGES.</span></h2>
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<div class="vline"><span class="vn">01</span> Pull the landing page report for the last ninety days.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">02</span> Strike out the contact and thank-you pages.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">03</span> Take the top five that remain and write them down with their current entry counts.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">04</span> Open each one on your phone, not your laptop, and read it as a stranger.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">05</span> Add the six items above to each page.</div>
<div class="vline"><span class="vn">06</span> Check the same report in a month and compare enquiries, not sessions.</div>
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<p>Compare enquiries rather than sessions, because none of this is meant to bring more people in. It is meant to stop losing the ones already arriving. If traffic stays flat and enquiries move, it worked.</p>
<p>If you want someone to read those five pages with fresh eyes, that is most of what our free audit is. We will tell you if they are already fine.</p>
<p><a class="magnet" href="/contact/">Get the free site audit <span>›››</span></a></p>
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<div class="astat"><div class="big">90</div><div class="desc">days of landing page data is enough to find the five that matter</div></div>
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<span class="stag">More field notes</span>
<h2 class="stitle">BACK TO<br><span class="yel">THE BLOGS.</span></h2>
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<div class="aleft"><p><a class="magnet" href="/blogs/">All posts <span>›››</span></a></p></div>
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