Most of the sites on the Web today are designed like a store with one front door. Everyone comes through that door, which lots of folks call the "home page," and then look at an array of choices to try to pick the ones that matter most to them. One front door might be necessary in the physical world, but it's not on the Web; and using multiple doors for specific groups of people can improve the quality of visitorsâ experiences on your site.
Here's how this worked for one of my clients, a specialized machine shop that dealt with folks in several different industries. The industries were very different.
In some cases, the company provided plating services on small specialty items. For others, they provided specific computer-aided design services to work with computer-controlled machines. The different kinds of customers had vastly different expectations and needs on the site.
The company sat down and created several different sub-sites. Each of those sub-sites was part of the overall site so the company name and domain name stayed visible. Each of them had its own
sub-directory and its own default page (called index.html) with specialized content for people in their different markets. In this case, we identified seven different markets, so we had seven different
sub-sites.
This provided three big advantages.
The first advantage was to the visitors. By coming in their own front door, they got right to things that mattered to them. It didn't matter if they were a customer or a prospect, if they could hit that door, then the site was more valuable to them because the content was more relevant.
The second big benefit came in promoting the site. We promoted the default entry page, of course, but we could also promote the individual entry points, since they were separate sub-directories on almost all of the search engines. That made us more likely to come up in the kinds of specific searches that prospects often do.
The third benefit was a cost benefit. Creating this kind of structure doesn't take super-sophisticated technology and programming. You can do it right away and without specialized hardware or software. It doesn't give you the level of personalization that a personalized page or a specialized personal site gives, but it's a big step better for a lot of reasons than just having one entry point to your site.
Making It Work
Even though you can do this quickly and easily, it shouldn't be a one-time thing. As you identify specific groups with specific needs, you can develop separate sub-directories with their own index pages and begin promoting them as well.
Because of the problems that some search engines have dealing with active pages, it's usually best to make your index pages in these sub-directories basic HTML pages.
ACTION TIP: With clients that I've worked with, I've found that, almost always, there are a couple of people who are the experts or who are responsible for marketing or service to the different groups that we identify. Make them responsible for the kind of content that goes up on the site. It gives them control, and they're the most knowledgeable folks in your company to do it.
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 30 July 2002
This is only one Big Idea. You'll find more in Wally's book, What's the Big Idea? and in his Big Idea column. There's a complete list on the Main Big Idea page. You may also order the book by clicking here.
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