I’ve encountered a few clients who absolutely demand a splash page be their home page on their web site.  I am always against this, unless the client happens to be someone like Coca Cola who doesn’t really need SEO.  If you are not Coca Cola, you need SEO. Your web site needs to be designed to make it easy on your prospects to navigate, and secondly, make it easy for Google, Bing & Yahoo to crawl and index your web site.  Splash pages pretty much block all of that from happening.

A splash page is typically a very minimalist page that ‘greets’ the site visitor with some pretty stuff.  Typically large images, or graphics which are used to push the site visitor to the next page.  Here’s a list of why they don’t work for both site visitors and search engines:

1.) Usability. Splash pages can take a while to load, users don’t have patience, users hit the back button and move onto the next site. They then buy what they are looking for from a site without a splash page, and one that loaded quickly.

2.) Speed Bumps.  Users don’t want to be inhibited or locked in.  A splash page requires the user to jump through your hoops to get to what they are seeking.

3.) SEO = Terrible.  Search engines want copy, keywords and text links to dig deeper into your web site.  Splash pages typically contain none of the above.  The home page of your web site is typically the most important page that search engines pay attention to.  Feeding a splash page to Google is like trying to salad off to Santa on Christmas Eve night.

4.) It’s not about you.  This is a touch pill to swallow. Users don’t always need to see bright shiny objects.  They visit about 10.8 places online prior to making a buying decision, pretty pictures are not going to sell them.  Keep the consumer in mind and what THEY need to be seeing on your web site, not what pretty pictures you think best summarize your business.  The bottom line, what can you do for the web site visitor, and how quickly can you do it.

2011 was a game changer for the Internet.  More and more users, more and more sophisticated mobile / table users and more and more businesses trying their best to reach the right audience at the right time.  Not thinking through your web site / Internet marketing presence could be a game changer for your business.  If it’s time to get rid of your splash pages, give me a call: In Orlando: 407-830-4550. Nationwide: 866-998-6886.

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