Every page on your website has the potential to impress or repulse, so why has it become acceptable to only optimise the home page, main page and landing pages?
Broadly speaking, every page performs one or more of the following functions:
– To inform.
– To impress.
– To persuade.
– To compel.
Pages that inform.
Passively sharing information is short-sighted in the extreme. Your website isn’t Wikipedia and so shouldn’t in any way be neutral. Put simply, you have an agenda in sharing your information, so for your informative page to be in any way effective, it has to impress, persuade and compel the visitor to act.
Pages that impress.
You might argue that all pages on your website should impress, but this would be a somewhat optimistic goal. There are, however, pages that do need to impress the visitor; pages that demonstrate your expertise and the strength of what you’re selling. The main page, about page and main product pages are obvious example, but these will be more effective by also being informative, persuasive and of course compelling for the visitor.
Pages that persuade.
This is where the sales process has moved from beyond catching attention and demonstrating what’s on offer. It’s now time to convince the visitor that they need what you sell. User testimonials and big, juicy benefits can be powerful and influential, but the pages should also be informative, impressive and of course compelling.
Pages that compel.
It’s all fine and well having great pages that inform the visitor about what you sell, that impress the daylights out of them, and convince them that they do indeed need what they’re looking at. Online sales,however, has little room for extreme subtlety. Your visitors have too much to do and too little time to do it in, and in most cases “this looks good I’ll buy it later” will result in precisely nothing. The visitor needs to be steered, pushed or gently forced into acting on their needs right now. Pages that also manage to be informative, impressive and persuasive will also help this final stage.
I assume you can see the pattern here. Your main pages and all entrance pages need to be treated like landing pages.
Let’s be effective out there.
