Your site visitors may not come in through your home page. In fact, the chances are that they will enter via a lower-level page.

New research by Gerry McGovern highlights the decline of the home page. Fewer people are entering websites through the home page; in fact the majority come in via lower-level pages.

As a result, it is a mistake to rely on navigation paths established on the home page as the likely starting point for tasks. This makes it all the more important that tasks are supported on any page that is likely to be visited in the course of trying to complete it.

Many life insurance websites fail consumers at critical points by not providing directions and links at appropriate times (they are not alone as an industry in this, however).

Take the example of someone who comes into the site from search results to the Term Life ‘landing’ page. On many sites, they might never see the link to the quote engine on the lower-level specific product page, or the link to the needs estimator on the higher-level life insurance landing page. If they can’t see what they need and are short on time – which most Web users are – they’ll go back to their search results and go elsewhere.

The key steps to preventing this behavior are to identify what tasks are most important to site visitors, and then to manage those tasks by implementing a carefully-considered linking strategy.

So make sure your signposts cater to all travelers. Think carefully about what should be linked from each page and don’t risk visitors making a u-turn.

We can help you manage your users’ tasks effectively. Read about our services for Life Insurance and Financial Services organizations.