If you got a group of marketers, designers, bloggers, and other web professionals together to talk about homepages, you could count on at least one of them comparing homepages to storefronts. While there is some merit to this analogy, I believe thinking about homepages as digital storefronts, has caused many bloggers to miss out on a whole lot of money.
Let’s think about the function of a storefront for a second.
In my late teens I took a management position at shoe store at the local mall. We didn’t have a whole lot of choice of what went in the giant windows that made up our storefront, as far as signage went. However, we did get to pick a couple dozen or so pairs of shoes to be displayed in the windows on any given day.
Our strategy? Display a little bit of everything. Half were men’s shoes; half were women’s. Five basketball shoes; five skate shoes; five casual shoes; five dress shoes.
The setup wasn’t always so evenly distributed, but you get the idea. The point is, we wanted to attract the eye of whomever happened to walk by. And because we had no control over who walked past our storefront, our goal was to appeal to as many people as possible.
This is the approach taken by most bloggers and online business owners – and it’s all wrong!
What’s Wrong with the Digital Storefront Strategy?
The purpose of a brick and mortar storefront is to catch people’s eyes and get them in the store. Once you’ve got them in the door, all you have to do is lead them to the right pair of shoes and make the sale.
But things are different in the digital world. Online, once people are on your homepage, they’re already through the door. If you think of your homepage as a digital storefront, then you’re still trying to get everyone’s attention, when you should be focusing on leading the people already in your store to the right pair of shoes.
“But I Don’t Sell Shoes. Or anything for that matter!”
OK, so you don’t sell anything on your blog and rely on ad revenues instead, but surely you can think of something the visitors to your blog need to be doing in order for your blogging business to grow.
As a blogger myself, here are a few thing I want people to do when they visit my blog:
- Share blog posts with friends and on social media.
- Build content and community by making comments on posts.
- Subscribe to my newsletter so I can invite them back later.
If you can get your visitors to take action in the above three ways on a regular basis, you can grow your blog’s reach, increase ad views, and make more money.
Getting Visitor To Do What You Want
The key to getting your visitors to help you grow your blog is to think of your homepage as if it were a landing page.
By applying the methods used to create effective landing pages, you can focus on the people already in the door (on your homepage) and lead them to the right pair of shoes (shares, comments, opt-ins).
What’s the Difference Between a Landing Page and a Homepage?
While homepages are often thought of as digital storefronts, trying to grab the attention of anyone who might click through, landing pages are much more focused and goal-oriented.
The goal of a landing page is get visitors to take action, often in the form of providing their contact information or purchasing an item. However, in many cases (such as yours), landing pages can be used to promote a particular piece of content or to get that same piece of content shared via social media.
So in order to reach your goal of shares, comments and opt-ins, you need to bring focus to your homepage, and subtly lead your visitors into taking action – just like a good landing page would do.
What’s Next?
Keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up post, where I’ll cover specific tips and trick for turning your blog’s homepage into a landing page, for increased reach and revenue.
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