I was recently at a client meeting where the client stubbornly insisted on incorporating a splash page on their website against my advice, claiming it builds a “brand”. I get a strong urge to voice my true profane thoughts out loud at moments like that but I know better..
A BRAND is not just a logo, picture or creative concept!
A BRAND has something called BRAND EXPERIENCE as its core component (intangible values). This experience must be reflected at every touchpoint. If my organization is supposed to provide a solution to a problem (be it a product or service), then my first and foremost aim is to make attaining that solution EASY and ENJOYABLE….this is BRAND.
Providing, yet another obstacle for someone trying to get onto your site creates a negative brand experience…and as if that’s not enough, everytime they return there it is again, your pretty logo blocking their way into your site. Do you really think that each website visitor (typically with a 3-click attention span) is thinking “wow, what a pretty colourful logo, this is really a great brand, i’m glad they keep reminding me what their colours are…”?
Think of running into your local gas station in a hurry to pay for your gas. Imagine opening the front door and entering a hallway with another set of giant mahogany closed doors at the end of it which have ” WELCOME TO COMPANY X “WHERE THE CUSTOMER COMES FIRST” written above them. You have to walk forward and press down on the big heavy handles to enter….(the offline equivalent of having to do an extra click online). Now doing that once may not seem so bad, but would you still return to this gas station [website] if another one was built beside it with no extra door [splash page], just a place to make your payment [substitute with primary goal of your site]?
This is just a fraction of SPLASH page problems. An even bigger problem is search engine visibility. Search Engine spiders will crawl a splash page (typically the root directory of your website) and make their opinion about your website content based mainly on the text on that page (ususally…”enter here”..or “French” “English”). These words would be seen as the primary keywords on your website since they are dominant on your first page. Are those the search queires you are targetting? Have you looked at the latest stats showing the over 80% of users use search engines (specific keywords) to find what they are looking for (even if they know the url)? How many times have you Googled a wesite whose URL is familiar to you?
A splash page will hurt your website’s visibility consideraby. Don’t believe me? Google this “SEO and Splash Pages”
I’ll leave you with a link to one of my favourite blog entries on this topic:
http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/scribblings/scr-splash.php
[…] Start measuring your website bounce rates everyone! Don’t let other metrics fool you. Having 50,000 unique visits a month to your website means nothing if 50% of people leave without clicking on a single link within your site. This is the metric that turned the web design industry upside down when people started to realize that their flashy expensive splash pages were scaring away precious traffic (See my blog entry on SPLASH pages). […]
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[…] are the spawn of satan here, here, here, here, here, over here as well and finally here) to rederict a user to /main.php?javascript, and provide a link to /main.php for users without […]