Anyone creating Web sites should have long ago abandoned the idea that a home page is the only way visitors enter a site.

In this age of search engines, any page can give a visitor the all-important first impression and also do the work of selling, educating or entertaining.

Many sites, if they monitor traffic at all, simply count visitors and map clicks, without matching page design to website goals. Web design guru Jakob Nielsen cautions against the business cost of bad design and illustrates how inadvertent obstacles waste visitors’ time, discouraging or preventing them from accomplishing what they came to do.

Two sites with effective landing pages are Wikipedia and Amazon. The former site, a collaborative encyclopedia whose pages are often in the first few search results, doesn’t waste time when you land; it simply delivers the information sought. Entries’ consistent format provides central topical text surrounded by ancillary links and site navigation—but content is king. Amazon’s site allows purchasing on every book’s Web page, either by “Add to Shopping Cart” or by one-click ordering.

For an example of what not to do, Nielsen cites Christopher Norman Chocolates for using ineffective landing pages and internal splash screens hiding product assortments that may interest visitors. To avoid similar mistakes, examine Web pages you create as if you’re new to your site and on a mission. Ensure that what you see satisfies visitor needs and sells, educates, or entertains. Check how pages look using as many different browsers as possible, including the increasingly popular mobile devices.

Web Marketing Today gives specific—and extreme—advice on creating narrowly focused landing pages: “Any element of the landing page that distracts your visitor from taking the intended step must be ruthlessly eliminated.” Use your judgment. You don’t want visitors to feel buttonholed by a hard sell. But you must keep them focused on their (and your) business at hand.

Posted in Design