Musician Website Quick Fix #2: Lose The Intro Page

/ By Dave Cool / in Music Business/ No comment

This quick fix is a matter of opinion, but in my opinion - I don’t think Intro pages add much to a website’s value and can actually work against you.

Top 3 reasons why you should use an Intro page on your site:

1. You are promoting something in the short term, like a CD which is being released very soon. Adding a single call to action (Buy my CD here!) can focus your visitors attention to one thing.

2. Your website is under construction, and you want your visitors know that you are still there even though your site isn't accessible.

3. You have more than one website (one for your band, and one for your sound engineer business) and want your user to choose between these two website options right away when they land on your page.

Top 3 reasons NOT to have an Intro page:

1. It's annoying to your returning visitors – clicking "Enter Site" or "Skip Intro" is one extra click every single time they visit your website, before they can get to get to the good stuff (your blog, your music, your merch...and so on!) Extra clicks can mean people might not bother returning to the content.

2. It can hurt your rank with the search engines. Google picks up text content on your page and if the first page of your website is an Intro page, there isn’t much to tell Google if and how your site is relevant to search queries.

3. Confusing Navigation. Intro pages don’t have a menu like the inner website pages and this can be confusing to visitors landing on your page, especially if your “Enter Site” link is hard to see, or below the fold (meaning they would have to scroll down the page to even see it).

So tell me – do you use an Intro page for your website? If you do, is there a reason or a focus to it? I'd like to hear your thoughts!