The Tyranny of the Home Page
Written Mar. 18, 2009 by Tom Webster in Advertising + Blogging with 4 Comments
Most radio station websites sell the Home Page as prime real estate. However, unlike shore property, apparently when you run out of radio station home page real estate you can simply make more. Most station sites that I have seen continue to grow south at an alarming rate, becoming vertical monstrosities of old content and banner ad-after-banner ad. Now, I am not a scroll-bar fascist--there are lots of great sites that I will gladly scroll down several screens for, but not to see more banner ads!
The value of sites like Facebook and MySpace are not in the 'home page,' but in the vast depth of these sites--millions of pages, each of which may only be seen by a few people, but in aggregate is an inventory machine. I haven't even been to Facebook's home page in over a month (though I update Facebook regularly) and Facebook knows that, of course!
The more radio stations continue to pile 'broadcast' ads on an interactive medium, the more they devalue that medium. Both search engines AND contextual advertising depend on lots of single-topic, focused pages--depth, not 'length.' Radio stations have a tremendous opportunity to build that depth using both the talents of everyone under their roof and the skills of their listeners.
Reader Comments
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Spot on, Tom. Of course the trick is in creating the interest so users will make the first click, and that first simple click from the home page to deeper content is not easy to get.
The smallest part of many "music format based" radio station websites is music. Looking at one, we have ads, concert list (mostly big names at big venues only), ads, classic video games online, music videos, deals (coupons/sale ads), ads, News Feeds from Somewhere else, this day in music history (well this day in national music history....we have a local music history here too), where the station will be (and thier free stuff), Listen Live and the last 5 songs played.
What do they play? No Playlist (top 5,10,20,30,40,50)
Local Acts? Nope
Local News? A little weather box!!
Local Anything? Still looking.....
thats my view as a listner of the (unnamed) station
but looking at 4 or 5 others, they are just as bad, with so much "attention grabbing, flashing and moving" junk that, I would rather run (very quickly) away, and conclud that they are not looking at me as a valued listner here.
Bravos, Tom. Too many station pages smack of a Web 1.0 mindset, not much more than ad laden static brochure-ware. My sense is your real home page is, increasingly, Google. Going forward, the critical mission is to make your assets valuable, digital, discoverable.
Tom,
So true! Many station home pages look like the windows of a second-hand furniture store, going out of business sale - so crowded with screaming messages that you can't "see" what's inside.
Chris - you nailed it with the local perspective.
Stations that engaged with content about their community first and itself second have an edge. We can improve time spent viewing/interacting by being in context and relevant from the user perspective.