Though it’s 15 years old, the commercial is still relevant. Today, digital marketers commonly refer to themselves as “cat herders,” and for good reason.
No matter how well we light the path, online visitors still dart in every direction — seemingly at random. Clicking elements with no links. Getting distracted by almost anything. Screwing up the simplest form fields. And visiting pages that don’t matter (919 visits to my privacy policy,really!?)
If your site had a dusty old sock drawer, you’d find 10 visitors curled up inside.
When users visit, you want them to end up on a high-converting path. But too often they never make it.
The nature of high-converting pages often precludes them from getting large amounts of organic traffic. These pages usually have limited content, and focus on a single offer — both things Google’s algorithm doesn’t like. Instead, homepages often get the majority of visits — much to the chagrin of anyone working in the conversion optimization industry.
Homepages have always reminded me of those terrible buffets that serve both Western and Chinese food, and do a lousy job of both. When appealing to so many audiences at once, it’s difficult to develop a strong conversion funnel — and everyone leaves unhappy.
So all this begs the question: how can marketers keep their users on engaging pathways that increase our chances of converting them to customers? And if possible, can we funnel traffic from low-converting pages to high-converting pages without disrupting the user experience?
The tactic I’ll discuss in this post is designed to do just that.
It’s called traffic-shaping, and it’s much like bridge-building: incentivizing users to go where you want them to go; a lasso for your digital cat-herding efforts, if you will.
Later in the post, I’ll discuss (with examples) how to implement traffic-shaping on your website, but first, it’s important to know why this tactic is needed in the first place.
Why is Traffic-Shaping Necessary?
Reason #1: Most Websites Have Poor Information Architecture
Information architecture is the art and science of organizing websites. Good information architecture aligns the user’s needs with the site owners’ needs.
Good information architecture is also rare.
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