by Curt Mercadante
As Feed.us’ Rick Stratton correctly points out in this post, the importance of your Web site’s once-cherished homepage is fast waning.
Why? First, because Google, Bing and RSS readers have made every single page of compelling content on your page vital.
Second (in our humble opinion), your homepage represents “eyeballs.” Your “internal” pages represent engagement.
Allow us to provide a quick example. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, the McCain and Obama campaigns were both up with Google keyword ads. While the Obama ads drove people to pages where you could find and RSVP to local events in your area, the McCain page drove people to their homepage (or, even worse, their contribute page.) The Obama ads were all about engagement — the McCain ads were about eyeballs (or trying to use the Web site as an ATM machine, which is a no-no.)
Here in Illinois, we are a few weeks from Primary Election Day, and we are seeing the vast majority of Facebook ads driving viewers to campaign homepages. What is the value in that? Sure, you can measure total “eyeballs” that are seeing your homepage — but wouldn’t you rather be capturing those eyeballs so you can engage with them on an ongoing basis? Why not drive them to your Facebook fanpage (assuming you have one) so they can become a supporter and you can communicate with them on a real-time basis (for free)? Or, at the very least, drive them toward your latest TV ad (with a sign-up functionality included) or your volunteer page.
So many political campaigns, corporations and other organizations are still trying to use their online programs as a broadcast mechanism, when they should be using it as an engagement mechanism.
In doing so, they’re missing a great opportunity, and wasting their valuable dollars in the process.