Find out which page people go to next and whether it is the one that would help them decide. Most sites have never checked and are leaving the path to chance.

Nobody converts on arrival

Somebody arriving from a search has a question and gets an answer, and then either leaves or looks at something else.

Very few enquire at that point, because they have established one thing and are now checking others: whether you are any good, whether you cover them, what it costs.

So the enquiry, when it comes, usually comes from the second or third page.

Which makes the path between them the thing that matters, and it is almost never designed.

Find out where they actually go

The report exists in every analytics tool and almost nobody opens it.

Look at your top three landing pages and, for each, what page people viewed next.

Frequently the answer is the home page, which means they could not find what they wanted and went to the top to start again.

Sometimes it is a page you would not have chosen, and occasionally it is nothing at all, which is the largest group and the one to work on.

Ten minutes with that report tells you more about the site than any amount of opinion about the design.

What the second page should be

Which of those it should be depends on what the first page left unanswered, and that is a different answer for a landing page about a specific fault than for one about a whole service.

The home page is the wrong answer

Worth stating, since it is the most common second page and the least useful.

Somebody going to your home page from a service page has gone up rather than forward, which means they were looking for something the page did not offer.

Home pages are written for people who arrive with no context, so a visitor who already has context finds it a step backwards.

Where the report shows a lot of movement to the home page, the fix is on the first page: it is missing a route to whatever they wanted.

Treat it as a signal about the landing page rather than as a problem with the home page.

A worked example

A business found that their most-visited page, about a common repair, sent people to the home page more than anywhere else.

The page explained the repair well and said nothing about cost, area, or who they were.

They added three things at the end: the typical price range, a line naming the areas covered, and a link to two photographs of that repair with a sentence each.

Movement to the home page fell substantially, movement to the contact page rose, and enquiries from that page roughly doubled.

The page itself had not been wrong. It had simply been a dead end.

Link forward deliberately

Since most internal links are decorative or automatic.

At the end of each significant page, name the two things somebody would most likely want next and link them, with a few words saying what each is.

Not related pages, which is a label rather than an offer, and not an automatic list of recent posts, which is whatever the system produced.

Two named links outperform eight generated ones, because they are choices rather than a menu.

Choose them per page rather than using the same pair everywhere, since what somebody wants next depends on what they just read.

Link within the text as well, where the reader would naturally want the other page, which is more effective than a block at the bottom.

The third page decides it

A point about depth that changes where to spend effort.

Somebody who views three or more pages is substantially more likely to enquire than somebody who views two, which is visible in most analytics.

That does not mean more pages cause enquiries, since interested people naturally look at more.

It does mean the path is worth building two steps rather than one: the second page should also link forward, and frequently does not.

Check whether your likely second pages are themselves dead ends, since a good route into a page that goes nowhere has moved the problem rather than solved it.

Make the contact route constant

The simplest version of all of this.

Wherever somebody is on the path, the way to contact you should be visible without navigating.

A phone number in the header on every page, and a prompt at the foot of every significant one, means the path does not have to end anywhere in particular.

That is a lower-effort answer than designing journeys and it captures the people whose path you did not anticipate.

Do that first, then look at the report, then improve the two or three pages that most people land on.

The path from an advertisement is different

Worth separating, since paid traffic behaves unlike search traffic and is frequently sent to the same page.

Somebody clicking an advertisement has seen a specific promise and expects the page to continue from it, so their second page is more often the contact page or nothing at all.

That makes a dead end considerably more expensive, since the click was paid for.

Check the next-page report filtered to paid traffic separately, since the pattern usually differs from the same page's search visitors.

Where it shows movement to the home page, the advertisement and the page are not matching, which costs money on every click until it is fixed.

The counter-case

Paths can be over-designed.

Visitors do not move through a site in the order anybody planned, and elaborate journey design for a seven-page site is effort spent on a model of behaviour rather than on behaviour.

The next-page report is also noisy on low traffic, where a handful of visits can look like a pattern.

And the largest group is always people who viewed one page and left, most of whom were never going to enquire.

Open the report, fix the dead ends on your top three landing pages, and keep the contact route visible throughout.

What to do

  1. Find your top three landing pages.
  2. Look at what page follows each.
  3. Treat home page traffic as a missing route.
  4. Ask what the first page left unanswered.
  5. Add two named links at the end.
  6. Check the second page is not a dead end.
  7. Keep contact visible on every page.

Step three is the most useful reading of that report, since movement to the home page is almost always a signal about the page they left rather than about the one they went to.

Seeing your own site without context is covered in reading your own site as a stranger.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the second page matter?

Because almost nobody enquires from the page they arrive on. They establish one thing, then check others, so the enquiry usually comes from the second or third page.

How do I find out where they go?

Every analytics tool has a next-page report. Look at your top three landing pages and what page people viewed after each. Ten minutes tells you more than any opinion about design.

What does movement to the home page mean?

That they went up rather than forward, because the page they were on did not offer what they wanted. Treat it as a signal about the landing page.

What should the second page be?

Whatever the first page left unanswered: price, proof, coverage, process, or a related service. It differs by landing page.

How should I link forward?

Name the two things somebody would most likely want next, with a few words on each. Two named links outperform eight generated ones, because they are choices rather than a menu.

What is the low-effort version?

Keep a phone number in the header and a prompt at the foot of every significant page, so the path does not have to end anywhere in particular.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Never opened the next-page report?

Look at your top landing page and see where people go. If it is the home page, that page is a dead end.

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