Internet Marketing -- Entry Strategy
Traffic patterns, going in, out, and through your web site can be very important to you.
Entry
You might not realize that a visitor might enter your site at just about any of your web pages. This happens because, hopefully, each of your web pages is optimized to get a high ranking in a search engine. When a particular page gets a high ranking, people clicking on it go directly to that page and bypass your home page. This is a good thing because you want the person to feel that they found exactly what they are looking for.
It's not a good idea to try to show them everything you have to offer in hopes they will buy it all. What you are doing is totally confusing them and annoying them too. They hit your site because they were looking for something specific and you gave them something general. When you do that, they move out and on to someone else's site quickly.
What you want to do is make sure that when people hit one of your secondary pages on your site that they can still navigate easily around the rest of your site.
TOM’S TIP:
Send a friend of yours, who might not be too familiar with your site, directly to a sub-page of your site. Ask them to try to get around in your site and to jot down what questions they had as they tried to navigate. Take this feedback and use it to make sure there is no doubt what to do when a visitor wants to explore the rest of your web.
Lead them around
The worst thing you can do is confuse your visitor. They will leave immediately when they start to feel lost. Most people have far too many choices on their pages. You must lead them through your site and introduce them to your information in a logical sequence and in digestible bites. And ALWAYS give them a bailout home button so they can start over again if they do get lost.
You might say, "Tom, I think you're crazy. Some of the most successful sites in the world like MSN have a million choices on every page. Half the time I don't know where to click, but they're still successful." My reply is, "Forget trying to compare your small business site to sites that have enough money to advertise on the side of every bus in America. The biggies can get away with things that would be suicide for your small business site."
Think about where you want your visitor to end up and what action you want them to take when they get there. Then work backwards to the most likely place they enter your site. Review each page they will encounter along the way and make sure it doesn't send them off in the wrong direction.