WordPress Developer Tip: Your Website's like Downton Abbey.

Why your WordPress Developer
Should Close the Door on Your Home Page

Remember when Mr. Matthew Crawley, a working barrister (for shame) and heir to the Downton Abbey Estate, arrived on the scene? He inadvertently challenged the establishment when he insisted on ?lower-class? behavior like preferring to drive his own car over a chauffeur, riding a bicycle in public and holding down a real job?

Young Mr. Crawley challenged the commonly accepted concept class and elitism. He challenged these traditional vestiges that family patriarch, Robert, Earl of Grantham, held dearly.

Lord Grantham clung to antiquated notions of class economics while the tidal wave of change in societal change was flooding in.

Think of your website as that grand English estate, Downton Abbey.

As the website caretaker, you?re the steward of its responsible, fiscally-sound management. You?re responsible for your website?s future existence and success.

Meanwhile, titanic digital change is upon us.

Your Website is Your Castle

Your website is your castle.Like Downton, your website is a house filled with treasures. Each website pages is a room in that house.

So ?Contact Us? may be the kitchen. ?About Us? is the bathroom. Each of our rooms is decorated in regal splendor (we?ll call that website Content).

It?s easy for a Visitor to get lost in the depths of the multitude of connecting rooms. The deeper you venture, the more lost a Visitor becomes. Especially if they?re not familiar with the layout.

Sounds like your current website has a lot of the same problems as Downton…

Your home page is the mighty portal to this mansion. Your PPC has chaufferred in online Visitors to your home page. It serves as the grand entryway. Visitors arrive. They?re greeted by Mr. Carson and staff. Or so it was?

Using your home page as the main entry to your website (or worse yet the ONLY way in!) is pass?.

It?s as antiquated as the notion that a?chauffeur?should not marry a Lady. As quaint as having?a?chauffeur.

Landing Pages
Side Entry Portals to Your Website

Landing pages are the side doors to your website. They make a quick and convenient entry for potential website Visitors. They?re short-cuts that make website discovery and entry easier for online Users. Create Landing Page ?shortcuts? to your website based on:

* Your Target Customer Personas (yes, contrary to Tim Ash, personas matters).

* Ability to deliver a relevant, timely and contextual answer to a persona?s search query. This will increase conversions.

* Where your Persona is in the purchase funnel. Serving up relevant offers will increase conversions.

* Website conversion goals & objectives (pre-determined with your marketing firm)

Now it?s possible to build multiple doors. We can build a Landing Page door for every room if we wish. ?And we can build those landing page doors so they?re easily and quickly accessible.

You simply must build Smart Landing Pages to maximize your Inbound conversions. Smart Landing Pages are part of an effective Conversion Machine.

Make Your Website Comfortable for Visitors
Not the Opposite.

Indecision is bad enough. Uncertainty compounds the problem.

When an online User is welcomed in from the internet cold, welcomed into the warmth of your home, they will stay. ?As long as these Visitors continue to feel welcome, they will engage with you and become prized guests.

Overtly ornate website d?cor (ineffective, cluttered content) can be distractive rather than attractive. Landing page design must be clear and concise.

One goal for your Landing Pages:
Cause a conversion.

So now, when a Visitor arrives ?hungry? your website can easily provide a portal directly to the kitchen. Invite them directly in the same door to which the bread?s delivered.

The door should be clearly marked ?Kitchen? so the Visitor knows where to go. There your Visitor will be greeted by Mrs. Pratmore rather than Carson.

There will be only one door in and one door out on the landing page. The Visitor may accept our invitation to engage by providing information which will allow us to become closer and proceed further into our home. In this case, we?ll guide our Visitor through what I like to think of as a secret passage deeper into our site.

The only other alternative is for the Visitor to deny information. In this case the Visitor will return to the cold, cruel search environment of the internet.

Serve Up Good, Hot, Fresh Content

Build a Landing Page that delivers steaming hot, fresh-baked bread and hot tea upon entry through that door. That way, you?ll welcome guests with the hearty wholesomeness that would make Mrs. Pratmore proud. You?ll serve the rest of the meal once our Visitors has share their name and, perhaps, intent for arriving at this point.

Create an environment that facilitates comfort ability and familiarity with your Visitors. They?ll be more likely to stick around when you invite them to sit by the warm fire in the den later in the evening.

Make it comfortable for your Visitors by understanding your target customer personas. It?s similar to when Thomas ate with the staff. He felt more comfortable breaking bread with his brethren in the staff kitchen then the stiff formal dinners in tails.

Don?t Let Your Home Page Be a Bottleneck

In other words, don?t require all your Visitors to enter through the grand home page. They?ll have to wander through corridors, walk down the steps, down the back hallway before arriving at ?Contact Us.?

Provide direct access through a Landing Page designed for conversion.

If you were desperately seeking to reach ?About Us? (remember, that?s the bathroom) from the outside Abbey gardens (the internet), wouldn?t you prefer a door that takes you quickly inside to your destination over a long, complicated internal journey.

Of course you would. That way you can take care of business and get back to the fox hunt.

So, too, do your Visitors prefer clearly marked, easy entry portals into your website.

Landing Pages Work

Smart Landing Pages are an emerging online tactic with proven results.

Landing Pages Work:

Companies with 40+ landing pages get 12X the leads of companies with 5 or fewer landing pages. (Hubspot)

The average conversion ?lift? using Smart Landing Pages is 45% (Webdirexion)

Average cost-per-lead from Inbound Marketing: $135. For Outbound: $346 (Hubspot)

Website Change is Good for Conversions

Building new Smart Landing Pages is a positive change for causing conversation. Landing pages that challenge the current WordPress Developer status quo of static Landing Page Design.

Matthew Crawley challenged the status quo at Downton by asking tough questions. So should you.

Where is your website going? Will you act like Lord Grantham, stubbornly resisting the sweeping digital changes all around us?? Suffer, then, the consequences of inaction.

Or will you act as the visionary, Mr. Matthew Crawley, defining and building your future online success based on a new reality?

This is your website. This is your Downton Abbey. Don?t be Daisy. Choose wisely.