When was the last time that you used your front door to enter your house? Like a lot of people, I simply hit the garage door opener and come in through the garage.  Whether it’s the front door, a side door, or the garage, if I had guests using those various entry points, I would want to make sure I put my best foot forward. I certainly wouldn’t want them tripping over my golf clubs. I would also want to make sure I knew what entry points people mostly used so that I could prepare.

Similarly, do you know how many people come to your web site entering through the homepage? I would bet not as many as you may think. The value of your homepage has shifted dramatically in recent years. In most cases, it has gone from a Traffic-Driver to a Brand Builder. The New York Times, for instance has less than half of its traffic start from it’s homepage. GradSchools.com, 11%.

Typically, search engines drive most traffic to your site followed by social sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr, etc., however good SEO allows for visitors to come directly to the page that they are most interested in.

The key to knowing what is driving most of your traffic and where they are entering your site is through the use of Google Analytics. For instance, the use of the Start Pages report can help to identify the pages from which visitors started searching. From there you can make sure that the pages listed on this report are pages from which you’d expect visitors to search and not pages from which visitors are searching out of frustration.

Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics will also let you look at interactions across different digital media and show how these channels work together to create sales and conversions. More importantly, this tool helps you make crucial marketing decisions regarding advertising investments at the macro level — what channels — as well as the micro level, for example what keywords and ad placements.  Using Google Analytics advanced functions will allow you to better understand user behavior, and what you can do to optimize the effectiveness of key web pages.

So whether your prospects enter through the front door, side door, or the garage, you will know how they found specific entry points on your site and you will be ready to take advantage of their visit and make sure they leave with what they were looking for.