Are You Hiding Your Best Content on Your Homepage?

Recently, I launched a brand-new video podcast called Jay Today. I upload a new, 3-minute video every business day, where I talk about social media, content marketing, business and life. It’s a way for me to talk about what’s in my head RIGHT NOW.
Here’s a Jay Today video about why EVERY page on your website is potentially the homepage, and why you cannot hide your most important content solely on that page. (transcript below, if you prefer)

JayToday is available on Youtube, iTunes (as a video podcast), and at JayToday.tv. The show is sponsored by Sprout Social (which I use for my social media), and Candidio (a great video editing service).

Stop Hiding Your Content on Your Homepage

Hey everybody, it’s Jay Baer with another episode of Jay Today, where I give you a piece of my mind three minutes at a time.

Somebody today was talking to me about their website and was describing functionality that they were trying to promote. They said, “Oh, it’s the fourth thing on the scrolling hero image carousel on the homepage.” You know what I’m talking about, right? So many web pages have those rotating sliders, feature 1, feature 2, feature 3, feature 4. Many, many big websites have it. Maybe your website has the same thing?

I looked at my Google Analytics, I looked at the Google Analytic reports for all of the clients that we work with, and I realized that for none of those websites, zero, was the landing page of the homepage more than 50%. Said another way, fewer than half of all the people who go to any of those websites ever see the homepage.

This is particularly true if you have a lot of content, and you should. It’s particularly true if you have lots of blog posts that are being picked up in social media and in search engines and people are showing up on your website with a blog post being their first page.

Understand this folks, we are in an age where every page of your website is potentially a homepage, and if you have some sort of amazing secret sauce, promotional item, calendar item, testimonial quote, something great about you that only exists on your homepage, half of the people coming to your site, if not more, will never, ever, ever see that thing that you think is so amazing. Every page is a homepage.

Every page of your website is potentially the homepage. (click to tweet)

So if you have something really important, find a way to sprinkle that thing throughout the whole website. Also it’s incredibly important to make sure that when people parachute in behind enemy lines and they show up on a web page, a blog post, something like that that isn’t your homepage, they have to be able to orient themselves to your site structure and your site navigation instantly. It has to be super obvious where they are, how to get back, how to get forward. That’s why breadcrumb navigation is really, really important, and this goes double or triple important for mobile. No one’s going to dick around trying to sort through your website navigation on a phone.

So remember, every page is a homepage. If something is so important to you, it shouldn’t just be on the homepage, because you’re probably hiding it. That’s what I think.

See you tomorrow on Jay Today. Thanks.

Get More Jay Today

Feedback on the new show has been great – especially the snackable length. I would be so honored if you watched the episode above and/or some others. I’d love your thoughts too!
Here’s the shows from the last few days:
Why You Need a New Look, and it Probably Should be Mobile
Why Every Social Interaction is an Opportunity
Will Google Ruin its Social Network by Allowing Fake Names?
Why There’s No Excuse for a Social Media Crisis