Iceberg publishing is a better way of structuring websites.
This article will show why most brands should rethink their website structure.
As a digital strategist, I’ve helped many brands convert to Iceberg Publishing, where they focus less on one single front page and instead strive to construct a website of “a thousand front pages.”
Let’s dive right into the cold water:
Let Your Front Page Breathe
Too many organisation clutter their front page. Internet-savvy businesses like Google doesn’t.
Too many call-to-actions on any page will typically never lead to more conversions. Placing too many types of sections into a web design is likely to cause conversion cannibalism, where different call-to-actions are punishing each other.
Read also: Beware of Conversion Cannibalism
Using fewer CTAs per web page is a growing web trend. Ideally, each URL on your website should only contain one CTA. And a web page with only one CTA is also known as a — landing page.
Types of Landing Pages
Landing Page (LP) = a single-purpose web page stripped of standard menus and sidebars with a single call-to-action chosen to match the visitor’s previous intent.
A few examples of landing page types:
Each landing page type serves a specific purpose in the customer journey, focusing on a single objective to increase conversions.
Read also: Iceberg Publishing — The Cool Way to Grow Traffic and Conversions
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A landing page is a web page with one singular call-to-action — or the same call-to-action repeated vertically. These pages are often stripped from sidebars, navigational menus, footers etc., to maximise conversions.
Theoretically, you should transform your entire website into a hierarchy of landing pages. Alternatively: Think of a modern website as a website where every URL is a front page.
Another way is to think of your site as an iceberg.
Deep Content
Above is an example of an online content structure that’s five levels deep.
In the example above, five layers of evergreen content are stacked:
Deep content is centred around providing increasingly higher quality to Content Divers since they’re more valuable than Surface Dwellers.
As for the importance of structure and depth, the logic is the same as for iceberg publishing and content themes.
Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper
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Your Site is an Iceberg of Pages
You could think of your website as an iceberg. One characteristic of an iceberg is that whatever you see of the iceberg floating above the surface, you can be sure that the iceberg is many times larger underneath the surface.
“Typically about one-tenth of the volume of an iceberg is above water, which follows from Archimedes’s Principle of buoyancy; the density of pure ice is about 920 kg/m3 (57 lb/cu ft), and that of seawater about 1,025 kg/m3 (64 lb/cu ft). The contour of the underwater portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface.”
Source: Wikipedia
So, “above the surface” where some of your pages are easily accessible from your site navigation (menu links, footer links, sidebar links etc.). And then, “beneath the surface”, you place a vast array of web pages not directly linked to your navigation — landing pages.
The way to think about iceberg publishing is to imagine building a website where non-navigational landing pages outnumber navigational web pages.
Here are some helpful landing page examples:
Event Landing Pages
When I talk at events, people ask if they can get hold of the slides I’ve just shown.
Still, many years of experience have gone into manifesting the knowledge I share. I think it’s only fair that I get something extra for sharing my presentation, right?
So, instead of just sending over a file with my presentation to the coördinator, I end my seminar with a link to a landing page where the audience can opt-in to download my presentation.
This way, the audience gets access to my presentation instantly afterwards — and I get a chance to nurture the new relationship digitally. At this point, I think I’ve created 35 event landing pages. The conversion rates on these pages are often between 70 – 90%.
When you could use event landing pages:
Thank-You Landing Pages
Every web page needs a landing page that says thank you. Most brands need several different thank-you landing pages.
When you could use thank-you landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
About Landing Pages
Most websites have at least one about page. Despite often being quite dull, these pages are often relatively well-visited. Therefore, it makes sense to transform your about-pages into landing pages.
When you could use about landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Content Theme Landing Pages
Brands focused on online content often concentrate their efforts on content themes. Once such a period is completed, creating separate content theme landing pages often makes sense.
When you could use content theme landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Content Themes
Let’s use a fictitious example of an IT company. First, they decide on a Promise Filter for their content strategy:
Promise Filter: We make IT easy to understand.
Then, the IT company breaks their core message down into four business-critical Content Themes:
Q1 Content Theme: We make people understand the Internet of Things (IoT).
Q2 Content Theme: We make people understand business automation.
Q3 Content Theme: We make people understand cloud computing.
Q4 Content Theme: We make people understand managed services.
For each quarterly content theme, they produce Content Packages. Each content package could contain the following:
Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy
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Resource Landing Pages
Brands focused on inbound communications often generate deep content, such as downloadable assets, lead magnets, content upgrades, infographics, templates, swipe files etc. All such resources warrant their resource landing pages.
When you could use resource landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Form Landing Pages
Instead of embedding your forms directly into a standard web page, it’s often better to use a button and point to forms embedded on form landing pages instead.
When you could use form landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
FAQ Landing Pages
Many businesses get the same questions repeatedly, and for this reason, many companies use FAQ sections. One trick is to keep each answer in your FAQ very short and finish each reply with a Read More link. These links could then refer to many different FAQ landing pages.
When you could use FAQ landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Evergreen Content
What’s evergreen content? For a piece of content to be evergreen, it must sustain its value over time. Meaning: The content must be relevant today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable future.
While news content might have a more significant impact short-term, evergreen content instead accumulates over time.
There are different ways to leverage evergreen content. I recommend a few axioms for evergreen content:
Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time
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Automation Landing Pages
A brand could make good use of various online automation. It could be a short series of emails like a mini-course or a viral loop with a sequence of videos. These types of pages spell good opportunities for creating automation landing pages.
When you could use automation landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Disclaimer Landing Pages
Most brands use different kinds of disclaimers — which are typically dull. These disclaimers could be converted into disclaimer landing pages with some creative thinking.
When you could use disclaimer landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
Intent Landing Pages
Think about this: Where can a visitor click a link on the web and end up on your website? Suppose you know of such links, which can often be easily identified by tracking external referrers in analytics. You can set up intent landing pages to better serve (and convert) inbound audiences.
When you could use intent landing pages:
Use these opportunities to point your visitors to other landing pages.
How To Use Iceberg Publishing
Iceberg Publishing rests on three basic principles:
When someone clicks a link on or outside of your website, they demonstrate their exact intent through their action. Therefore, you should remove all distractions on the link target.
There should always be something for the visitor to do next, i.e., call-to-action. The idea is that the website should always offer a visitor the possibility to go deeper and deeper into the website.
A good rule of thumb is to have more landing pages than navigational pages (minus blog articles or wiki-style entries) to maximise usability, SEO, and conversions.
There are many benefits of using Iceberg Publishing:
Please support my blog by sharing it with other PR- and communication professionals. For questions or PR support, contact me via jerry@spinfactory.com.
PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound
Inbound vs Outbound
The inbound mindset is a fundamental shift in public relations.
Instead of focusing on trying to spawn non-existing audiences, PR can do so much more with existing online publics. 1Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://doctorspin.net/publics-in-public-relations/
If your inbound PR strategy is good enough, you might not even need an outbound PR strategy.
Read also: The Inbound First PR Strategy: Beauty From Within
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ANNOTATIONS
1 | Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://doctorspin.net/publics-in-public-relations/ |
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