The Big Problem with Website Entrance Pages and How to Avoid Annoying Your Visitors
Where a customer enters your website is as important as what they are looking for. The strategy is to get them where they want to be as efficiently as possible. If done correctly, customers will actually look forward to visiting and exploring your website. It will also aid in making your website visitor and search engine friendly.
Too Much Clicking Turns Customers Away
Visitor stats reveal that in some cases up to 90% of visitors will EXIT a website even before entering it! That’s not a misprint. The longer it takes for them to enter your site the more likely they are to NOT ENTER it. And if they are unable to quickly determine you have what they want, they will leave and continue their search elsewhere. The stats say it takes them just 10-20 SECONDS to make such a determination!
Keep that in mind when you are deciding where to let a customer enter your website. The more they have to look, the more likely they are to go somewhere else. Yet, the number of websites that require people to KEEP ON CLICKING is staggering. Ironically, home pages can be the biggest TURNOFFS for people. How many home pages have you seen that have nothing more than a company logo and force you to click on “enter” to access the website? Is this really necessary? Consider it from the viewpoint of the visitor trying to enter the website.
By forcing them to go through the ‘enter’ process, you are unnecessarily increasing the work they have to do to find the information they want. Remember, they probably came to your website by clicking on a link from a search engine or another website. Make the information they see relevant to what they are looking for. Instead, what happens is that they are usually taken to a page which seldom contains the information they want, and presents them with a number of other options that they need to take in and decipher.
Depending on the design and layout of a website the number of clicks a visitor may have to go through to get the information they desire can be quite daunting. Here’s a sampling:
- Intro page with company logo and ‘enter’ link
- A Flash presentation that some people like and others don’t
- Navigation to various sections of the website or graphical links
- More navigation and descriptions of various sections
- Further subsections and subheadings
- or If they’re lucky, to the exact content they require
The first one is nothing more than a doorway page that says to the visitor you have come to the door of my Internet business, ONLY by clicking can you enter. The second is a presentation that most visitors likely DON’T WANT to see. Make your Flash presentation an optional link instead of the default. This way they can view it if they should so desire, rather than having it forced upon them. Ask yourself, should a visitor really have to go through all that clicking to find the information he/she is seeking?
A website entrance technique that was popular in the past involved building doorway pages to get better listings on search engines based on relevant keyword phrases for products/ services offered. Since most businesses and webmasters are reluctant to allow too much text or changes to their websites, doorway pages were considered a viable option. The days of using doorway pages for website promotion are gone. Search engines now have the ability to FILTER them out. It is easy to understand why search engines hated them so much. The pages presented no value to the search engine or to the visitor, who often had to click through to the content they were looking for. Some of the pages contained no information except ‘click here’ to see the information you want. The death of such pages has resulted in a much higher quality of results returned by the search engines.
What’s The Solution?
The problem with most websites is that they don’t have the right kind of TEXTURAL CONTENT for the search engines and people (What The Search Engines See).A website is INVISIBLE on the Internet unless the search engines can read its content. You should know what ‘keyword phrases’ people are using to find your products and services and incorporate them into your website. Sometimes it can be hard to integrate them. For example, “buyer of structured settlement” might be difficult to assimilate into the website, but the fact remains, people are still using it to search for your products and services. So you really should find a way to include it and other ‘keyword phrases’ into your website. One way is to use Product Introduction Pages (Product Introduction Pages) which also serve as a very effective website entrances.
If you found this article useful and would like to discuss how your website can benefit from proven website promotion and search engine optimization, please email us at [email protected] or call 1-888-262-6687.
