Oh my, I’m out front! (Do home pages matter?)

I swear, I had NOTHING to do with the fact that this blog of mine is now in the navigation lineup folks now encounter when they visit our home page! It was my friend Laura the sales lady, I swear! She’s been moving stuff around to make it more logical and stuff, and…

Not that I’m complaining. Maybe it will get me blogging more often and not thinking I must have Something Very Extra Special Important to post.

It does remind me of something I read recently, though: As we move more and more into the mobile world — close to half of our page views are from folks’ smartphone and tablets — the home page — the spot I slave over more than any other in years of Website design assistance — is becoming less and less important.

What that means on the ad side — I mean, there’s only so much room on a smartphone screen, even my fun HTC One — I’ll leave to others to ponder. But for me, it’s like spending a whole lot of time over a very long time on the front door of one’s home – the fit, the finish, what it says — only to realize half your audience is entering through the side door, looking at one little piece of content — and quite often, moving on to something else somewhere else.

Wait! Come back! Futile, huh?

But it also speaks to the fact that while the home page is diminishing in importance, the layout and content of the article pages – the meat and potatoes of what we do – rises in importance. That’s why we have the links to other stories, including the ‘Most Popular” box to the right of every article. I also believe we’ve been getting more views since we put videos front and center atop every story that has one. They used to be tucked to the corner in a way that many may not have noticed or known was a video.

So anyway, as I welcome and greet you, newcomers to my words from the home page link or … however you got here, do let me know if you have any questions about KTVZ.COM you’d like me to address, or about, gulp, me if you prefer.

And however you got here – front door, window, through the roof – I… make that we sure appreciate it, and we hope to make it worth your while!

Have a great summer!