Categories: Articles

Every Page Is Your Homepage

"You don’t control your homepage. Google does."

If you expect to show up to one of Avinash Kaushik‘s presentations and not hear something provocative that you have never heard before, you’ve got another thing coming.

As closing keynote at this year’s InfoPresse Web Analytics Day, Kaushik – Analytics Evangelist at Google, Blogger at Occam’s Razor, Author of Web Analytics – An Hour A Day, and Six Pixels of Separation friend (we had a great 25-person Geek Dinner Montreal last night with Avinash) uses beautiful slides and eloquent language to encourage Marketers to think differently (and strategically) about the new Digital Marketing realities. And over 350 Marketers were on hand to pay witness.

Cutting through the crap and quagmire of useless Web Analytics in lieu of actionable insights has led Kaushik to really analyze the state of traffic, and what drives conversion online. Consumers finding your content, primarily through a Google search box, that drops them somewhere in the middle of a big and bloated website is only going to do one thing, and Avinash describes their experience best: "they come, they puke, they leave."

The premise is simple: every page of your Website must now be considered a homepage. The hours spent tinkering on your current homepage needs to shift into ensuring that every page is a brilliant representation for the keywords and external links that drove someone to your site. Fewer and fewer consumers are coming in via the homepage. They could also care less about what your company does or the other products you sell. They were searching for something specific, and if it’s not there after they’ve clicked on a search result link, they’re you’re roadkill on the information super highway.

Treating every page like a homepage seems like a simple tactic.

The truth is that it is a simple idea and a simple tactic, but it’s also very hard to get right – and so few Marketers are even thinking like this in the first place. The big win is to use Web Analytics to drive insights, focus and results. It’s nice to think about the fun we can have with online social networks, but let’s not ever forget about how measurable and actionable the Digital Marketing channel really is.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.