Digital Design Blog

Does the Home Page Still Matter?: Why Distribution Trumps Destination Online

From the Avenue A | Razorfish’s Digital Outlook Report…my take on why marketers, advertisers and web site publishers are still placing too much emphasis on the role of the home page in the consumer experience when all of the data is telling us to do otherwise.

ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO, a Web site’s home page was the most prime piece of digital real estate a publisher could offer. Not so much today, however. The relevance of the home page as a media buy is on the wane. Search, social networks, blogs, and RSS (among a host of other online sources) are driving more and more users deep into today’s Web properties. Now, the majority of consumers bypass a sites home page completely. In fact, according to Avenue A | Razorfish research, many top Web properties see 50% to 75% or more of their traffic originate somewhere other than the home page. And for some sites, that’s on the conservative side.

The Fall of the Pay Wall

The impact this is having on the online ad industry is profound. For example, The New York Times dismantled its relatively successful paid service, Times Select, in 2007 to focus on getting ad revenue from the massive amount of traffic driven by search and blogosphere linkage to Times Select content. That meant walking away from at least $10 million in subscription revenue per year, according to paidContent.org. And that’s hardly a paltry sum for a newspaper publisher today.

All Video is Viral

The effect of this change is being felt even more strongly by the broadcast and cable networks, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX, which are now wrestling with a host of different online distribution models for their programming — few of which involve driving traffic to their Web sites…or home pages, for that matter.

CBS is the most ambitious of the lot. In 2007, the company created the CBS Audience Network, a broad-based digital distribution platform, to syndicate its entertainment, news, and sports to as much of the Web as possible. In doing so, the company inked full-episode distribution deals and community partnerships with nearly 50 companies, including MSN, AOL, Comcast, YouTube, Joost, and VideoEgg among others. So far, revenue has been more of a trickle than a stream according to Adweek, but CBS’s strategy is still strong recognition of the fact that content is moving to a new, distributed environment, residing wherever users are on the Web.

Despite the confusion about how this will ultimately shake out, one thing is clear: There’s no sign that the home page will regain its former prominence anytime soon, if ever. Today’s consumers increasingly expect to imbibe content wherever and whenever they choose.

According to the Avenue A | Razorfish Digital Consumer Behavior Study 56% of consumers use RSS feeds, 70% or more use a search engine or portal to start their Web experiences, and 60% actively customize their start pages. All of which means we can expect the venerable home page to continue to fall on hard times in the year ahead.

There’s No Place Like Beyond the Home Page

Despite all of these changes, the waning power of the home page is not a doom-and-gloom scenario for the industry. Here’s how publishers and marketers need to adjust:

1. Adopt “traffic distribution” as a key site metric. To ensure that your digital content and Web properties are fully optimized for this new distributed ecosystem, make sure that you add traffic distribution as a key performance benchmark. Traffic distribution is comprised of all traffic driven to your Web property (either directly, referring, or through search engines) and the distribution of that traffic beyond the home page throughout the rest of the site. Our recommendation is that the total number of page views for the home page during any given time period should not exceed 35% of the total number of page views for the property. In other words, approximately 65% of a property’s traffic should originate from somewhere other than the home page. In addition, make sure that traffic from referring sites and search engines combined exceeds direct traffic to the property.

2. Treat every page like a home page. Every page is now a home page, each of which will have a wider reach, a lasting shelf life, and the ability to attract a new audience like never before. To capitalize on this, ensure that every page has a strong, clear global navigation scheme and related content that is visibly promoted. And don’t forget to make sure that display advertising gets prominent, above-the-fold, home-page-like treatment (300×250 rectangles and 728×90 leaderboards). Remember, every page can be accessed in any conceivable manner and in any conceivable order. You can’t design properties to control user flow anymore.

3. Distribute content widely and freely. Distribute content through syndication partners, promotion on social networks, linkage from blogs, and other viral techniques. Every page should sport a “Web 2.0 toolbar” that enables consumers to share freely via applications such as Digg, Reddit, and del.icio.us. If you have video, post and distribute it through all major platforms, including YouTube, Veoh, MySpace, and Facebook. Cast your net as widely and freely as possible to ensure maximum reach for your content.

4. Track performance across all digital touchpoints. Success of Web properties now needs to be measured both on-site and off. Detailed tracking of content syndication efforts, RSS feeds, e-mail subscriptions, widget downloads, podcast downloads, search engine performance (paid and organic), blogsophere linkage, and video consumption gives the most holistic measurement of Web property performance. You need to start thinking about the entire channel to measure success and not just the Web site itself.

Ultimately, we believe that publishers, advertisers, and consumers will all prosper in this new distributed environment. The industry just needs to adapt, again, as consumers continue to travel the Web in ways that circumvent home.

To read more articles like this please download the Avenue A | Razorfish’s Digital Outlook Report here.