What If We Treated Every Page Like Our Homepage?

I get it. You’re not going to stop obsessing over your homepage. And you shouldn’t.

Sure, only a percentage of your overall site traffic probably views your homepage in reality, but it doesn’t matter.

It means too much. It’s symbolic. It’s political. It’s your brand. It’s the first thing people see when they check out your organization’s domain when you hand them your business card, send them your link, or when they Google your company name (hopefully).

But interior pages do the bulk of the work for your site. They do the heavy lifting. They are what people see when they find an article via search, follow a link in social media, click on something in your email newsletter, and the pages people tend to bookmark. And your interior pages typically constitute the majority of your overall site pageviews. Shouldn’t they be getting more attention from us?

We tend to spend an amazing amount of time stressing over each pixel on our homepage and much less time agonizing over our interior pages.

So how do we strike the balance between spending your attention on your glamorous homepage and the hard-working interior pages?

By treating every page like we treat our homepage. 

Each page has a mission: Let it accomplish that mission. Every single URL on your site has a purpose. Whether it’s a how-to article, a slideshow, an email sign-up form, or an “about” page, it has a reason for being. But do we think enough about optimizing each page to serve that reason?

Each page deserves obsession: If it receives a visitor, it should receive our attention. Every page on a site has the potential to be making a first impression on someone. We know that not everyone arrives at your site through the homepage – they come through search engines, inbound links, social media shares, email newsletters, and more. Sometimes a visitor will be seeing your site for the very first time.

The natural argument against this sort of web design idealism is that there simply isn’t enough time to devote our attention to every single page on our site. And in practical terms, that argument is correct, so:

Determine the purpose of each page

Consider setting up goals so you can measure conversions of any on-page activity. If the goal of each article is to get a newsletter registration measure how many people are actually doing that. If you’re looking to get more people to share your content in social media, are you putting enough emphasis on calls-to-action to post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al?

Imagine the ideal outcome you’d like each page to achieve (even if it’s only to click on another article) and ensure that calls-to-action are clearly labeled and sans distractions.

Start with the top performers

Look at your analytics and find your top viewed pages. Take one at a time and look at the page as if it were a homepage. Put yourself in the shoes of a user and pretend you just got there from a search engine.

Is it absolutely clear what the page is trying to communicate? Are there distractions you could remove to make that page more focused on serving its purpose? Can you make the headline bigger? Are “related content” modules distracting from the purpose of the article you’re looking at? What first impression is this page making?

Use templates when you can

If you have pages that use a common template (i.e. “an article page”), are there any global adjustments you can make that will improve all pages of its type? Can you streamline the user experience so that each article is more singularly focused on serving its purpose?

Address the leaks

The biggest opportunity lies in fixing leaky pages. Isolate your pages with the highest bounce rates and exit rates and take a look at them. Are there any obvious reasons people are abandoning your site on these particular pages? What adjustments can be made to address these leaks? Are the headlines unclear? Is the layout broken? Are there images missing or formatting errors?

It may be unrealistic to treat every page like a homepage, but adopting this sort of thinking will maximize the value each page brings to the table and recognize that every page on your website is chance to make a first impression and accomplish a mission.

[image: websterkate]