If you are redesigning your website, you want to get the new buyer journey in place as soon as possible. That way, you can enjoy the benefits of increased lead conversion while making tweaks and iterations based on real user data and conversion rates.
The key to a fast redesign launch is focusing on launching the buyer journey pages first, and then bringing the rest of the website up to date following the launch. As you spend the time making the other pages great, you are reaping the benefits of the new design and buyer's journey.
What we've experienced from launching hundreds of website designs is that it's easy for website launches to be delayed months on end over pages that have little-to-no impact on the buyer's journey. You don't want to make that mistake.
So, do you know the key pages of your website that should be focused on first?
The Most Important Pages On A Website
In our experience, these are 5 common key pages you should consider developing and launching first.
#1. The Home Page
A website should seamlessly facilitate all the stages of the buyer's journey. That starts with a killer homepage. To avoid over-complicating a homepage content strategy, just focus on the few key areas, which include:
- A main value prop, and strong messaging to support it
- Actionable, benefit-focused CTAs
- Headlines and subheaders that communicate the value of your most desired product or service
- Social proof, such as customer testimonials and quotes
#2. Pages That Sell
The homepage can't always sell your products or services, especially when you have more than one. The homepage introduces those products and services, but the individual pages must do the selling. Next to the homepage, these are the most critical pages of your website.
Sales pages should communicate three things:
- What the product/service is.
- Why they need it - what they will get from it.
- How to buy it.
Additionally, when developing content, don't assume that the customer will understand the product or service by the time they land on the core offer page. You should include next steps for those who are not ready to buy yet. This is a fantastic opportunity to provide a lead magnet to capture leads.
#3. Content Pillar Pages
Content pillars are long-form pieces of content that cover a single topic in exhaustive detail. Pillar content should be worthy for the #1 ranking in Google for the keyword you want to rank for. For instance, if you wanted to rank for "inbound marketing," the pillar content would cover inbound marketing in exhaustive detail.
If you build your pillar content right, it will provide better educational content on the subject than any other single page on the internet. Then, any content that refers to inbound marketing should hyperlink to that pillar page. For instance, writing a post about lead nurturing would probably reference lead nurturing's position in the inbound marketing method. When you refer to inbound marketing, you can hyperlink to the pillar content. It becomes a support for all the mentions of inbound marketing.
And, in building content this way, you can compete for hard-to-rank search terms, which is a great way to increase your website traffic.
Need more traffic now?
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#4. Essential Buyer-Journey Pages
Your website, above all, needs to facilitate the buyer's journey. By building a great buyer journey, you can focus efforts on business objectives:
- For Increased Traffic - To bring in more traffic, a pillar content page could be the most important page you build.
- For More Leads - Landing pages and content offers that appeal to those who are near the beginning of the buyer journey can bring you more leads than salesy content.
- For More Sales Opportunities - If you have great traffic and are getting good leads but are having a hard time closing the sale, you may need more pages and content around the bottom of the funnel questions. Consider pages that position your solution and clearly establishes the cost of NOT buying.
You'll also need to build content that supports the decision phase. This content needs to justify investing in your service. Live demos or trial downloads help the visitor preview the product before purchase.
#5. Legalese
Although these pages aren’t as exciting to produce, they’re necessary to protect a brand. Here's what you need to know about creating legal use content:
- Privacy Policy - A privacy policy is legally required for sites that uses, manages, or collects user data. This communicates to users how their data will be used. This includes content such as what information is collected, how it's stored, how users can change that data, as well as what the user can do in the situation these terms are not met.
- Terms Of Use - This is an agreement that users must adhere to in order to use your website. In some cases, this page is not required by law. However, it's recommended. Terms of Use pages remove liability so you're not to blame for any content errors, as well as display copyright and and trademark info.
Before finalizing the content for these pages, consider consulting legal counsel.
What About Company Centric & Employment Pages?
Though these pages are normally important to stakeholders, they rarely matter to real customers. In most cases, they are not the pages that will impact the buyer journey. In other words, if you deleted them from your website, most companies wouldn't experience any decline in traffic, leads, or customers.
Pages that fit into this category are those about "us." Our company, our team, our values, our career opportunities, etc.. That's not to say these pages are not important. It's just that they shouldn't be the pages that hold up a new website launch.
By putting minimal resources for these pages (for now), you can ease the pressure on the redesign budget and get performance-impacting pages launched faster.
After Your Website Redesign Delivers
Once the impactful pages are developed and launched, your team can take their time developing and tweaking these tier-2 pages. By putting them in a tier-2 sprint following the launch of key pages, your company can enjoy the benefits of a high-performance website while bringing other pages up to par.
Not sure if it's the right time to redesign your site?
Take our simple health exam, just 12 questions, to help you identify whether now is the correct time to redesign your website.
As an Inbound Writer for Lean Labs, Melissa writes about high-converting websites and customer-centric marketing. She's an avid traveler, with trips to Iceland, Ukraine, and Portugal under her belt. She currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with her dog, Morrie.
