Why the article page, not the home page, is more important to the success of your site

When we embark on a new Web site project or a Web site redesign, it's customary to first start with the design of the home page. Most of us have been in the endless meetings where everyone weighs in on what the home page should look like. Days, weeks, sometimes months later, we emerge with a final home page design. Then we focus ongoing attention to the home page as we continually tinker with our sites, attempting to improve our metrics.

However, at the same time, it's fairly common knowledge among e-media folks that most of the visitors to our Web sites don't come in through the home page. And that most pageviews on the Web site happen on article pages rather than the home page.

But it had been awhile since I had documented this, so I wanted to do a guy check. I analyzed, for our top two Web sites, two metrics side-by-side: how many people entered on the home page versus an article page, and how many pageviews the home page got versus the article pages. The results confirmed the supposition: That in both cases, article pages, not home pages, both attract and conduct far more traffic.

Yet during the Web site design/redesign process, they get far less of our attention. (Or at least my attention.) Indeed, in many cases we're guilty of hastily assembling the article page design at the last minute, or merely using an existing template in the content management system, or worse, letting the programmers decide.

What if we paid attention to the article page template first, when designing? What if we really thought through how the article page can be used to draw people further into the site, to other pages? What if we took these percentages to heart and spent 60% of our time and energy on he article page and 10% on the home page?

I think we'd see better outcomes as Web site publishers. Think if you were able to increase pageviews per visit by 50% by experimenting with the home page. Now say instead you took that time and spent it optimizing the article page, and achieved the same 50% lift. You'd get a lot more bang for your buck, wouldn't you?

I'm not saying the home page should be ignored! It's certainly the first impression many visitors have of the site, and it's especially important to advertisers. It should look good and function well. But in terms of moving the needle on your Web site's performance, the article page is where the focus should be.

Okay, I've made my point. Here is one neat trend I'm seeing others do on their articles that I hope to steal during our next redesign:

Browsable horizontal scroll device with big headlines and pictures -- This example is from the Wall Street Journal. Also, note carefully that they number the articles: 1 of 10, 2 of 10, 3 of 10, etc. They're trying to re-introduce linear reading habbits into a hypertextual medium. Each article becomes a mini 10-page magazine or reading experience. It's crude, and it feels automated (several of the articles I saw didn't really seem to belong) but it's a great start.

The Huffington Post article page does something very similar, though they lack the "1 of 10, 2 of 10" linear numbering system. But they use wide, engaging pictures for each article, and have the self-same left-right arrow tools, though on opposite sides of the page. Also note on the Huffington Post page the very large headlines and photos for each article in the boxes down the left hand side.

There are many, many other clever things Web site publishers are doing to rethink the article page to increase engagement with our sites. We should all pay closer attention.