It’s common for businesses to send traffic directly to their website. This seems logical enough on the surface. After all, you want to introduce potential customers to your business and let them know all about you. The problem with this approach is that the information on your website is probably too general and spread out to make a strong impact. What you really need is a targeted landing page that solves a specific problem or addresses a specific issue that concerns your audience. Let’s look at the top reasons why you shouldn’t send people to your website.

The Purpose of a Landing Page

People who are new to online marketing often don’t understand the difference between sending visitors to a landing page as opposed to a website’s home page. A landing page is a page designed to appeal to a specific audience. Your home page, meanwhile, is the page that describes your business in general terms and links to all of your website’s other pages.

One purpose of a landing page is to sell a specific product, describing its features and benefits. If you sell multiple items, it’s often best to create separate landing pages for each of them. Landing pages are also extremely effective for obtaining leads. Visitors type in their email addresses in exchange for a gift or a subscription to your newsletter. Surely you’ve encountered this all over the internet. There’s a reason why so many marketers employ this tactic. It gives them the ability to send out emails whenever they want to targeted prospects. Using a landing page in this way is also called a sales funnel. The landing page is the top of the funnel that gets people interested.

Although the strength of a landing page is its focus, it’s fine to provide links to your website for people who want to learn more about you. Links to your Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media pages are also good.

Why Not to Send People to Your Home Page

Your website’s home page is like the lobby of an office building. The lobby may have a directory posted by the elevators where visitors look up the floor and office number they need. Or visitors sign in at a desk in the lobby. Your website is the digital version of this. The problem is, people on the internet are not patient. If they’re not presented with the specific information they’re seeking, they are likely to abandon your site and look elsewhere.

One solution is to try to stuff as much information as possible on your home page. This might include links to other pages, product descriptions,