Iceberg Publishing: The Cool Way to Grow Traffic and Conversions

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 don’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. A web page with only one CTA is also known as a — land­ing page.

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.

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.

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.

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:

PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound