Website Marketing For Your Small Business: Are home pages dead?

“It’s not your mentor’s home page anymore.”

When it comes to building a website, most marketers think “home page.” When you review WordPress themes, a key differentiator is the home page layout.

But home pages aren’t what they used to be. When you’re looking at websites, you might find yourself thinking, “This isn’t what my mentor’s home page looked like.”

And that’s a good thing.

About 10 years ago, Seth Godin argued that home pages don’t need to exist. You could have an index, a page for “newbies,” or a page to give people the first impression when they encounter you on the web. But, he says, your home page is not your home.

There’s a lot of truth to that.

Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers argues that it’s hard to write copy for home pages because these pages attract visitors at all stages of awareness.

A reader who’s completely unaware she has a problem will respond differently than another reader who knows he’s got a problem but doesn’t realize solutions exist. And they both call for different strategies compared to the person who’s down to comparing solutions.

Today your home page has two main functions: