In this episode of the Content Amplification Podcast, Shaun Whynacht reflects on the COVID‑19 pandemic as a catalyst that forces entrepreneurs to rethink how they engage customers virtually. He argues that the surge in remote work and virtual meetings has amplified mobile traffic, conditioning users to scroll continuously on their phones rather than click through traditional navigation menus. To align with this behavior, he recommends redesigning websites into long‑form, single‑page homepages that consolidate key sections (header, about, services, blog, contact) and use anchor‑link navigation that auto‑scrolls to each section. This approach mirrors the scrolling habit cultivated on social media platforms like Facebook. Shaun advises listeners to audit their mobile homepage: if most content can be consumed without additional clicks, the site is well‑optimized; if not, it needs redesign. He closes with a call to action to visit AmplifyMyContent.com for further help, while also reminding listeners to stay safe during the pandemic.
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Hi, welcome back to another episode of the Content Amplification Podcast. At the time of recording this episode, which is Friday the 13th, that's right. We are under attack as a world. It is the coronavirus. It is everywhere. It is in the media. There are things being canceled. There are conferences being postponed. There are sports seasons being cut. There is so much happening. But also, it is forcing us to look at our business in a different way. There are a lot of people who are used to going to work in an office setting who are now being told that you have to work from home. So one of the things that happened actually yesterday, which was quite interesting, was that Microsoft as well as Zoom have reported a higher than normal server load. And this is to be expected because more and more people are going on virtual meeting services like Zoom, like Microsoft Groups, I think is what it's called, and doing their daily interactions with other colleagues on these platforms. So what are you going to do in your business? This is an optimal time for you as an entrepreneur to look at your business. I mean, maybe you were going out and doing a lot of one-to-one meetings and now you need to look at, no, we're not going to do that, we're going to do it virtually. So we're going to set up some virtual meetings, we're going to do, um, Zoom calls, Skype calls, whatever platform it is that you want to do that, or Google, uh, Hangouts. And I don't know if they're still calling it Hangouts. I know they were looking to change it up. I think it's Google Meetings now. But this is an optimal time for you to transition and become more virtual. So with that, and what I wanted to talk about today in this episode is your website. What does your website do to enhance or complement the user ability, user interface, um, user behaviors I think is a better word to describe that. Now I'm going to give you a scenario and I want you to think about this. You're on social media, at least I'm pretty sure you're on social media, and probably within the last couple hours you have been on Facebook. Now when you pull out your phone and you're surfing through Facebook, what are you doing? Think about that. What are you doing? Not answering that as I'm looking at social content, but physically, what are you doing? What is your hand doing on the screen? You're scrolling. Your thumb is scrolling up, right? You're pushing up so that the content will scroll, right? And that's what you are being conditioned to do over the last several years as a society. We are being conditioned that this is the new way to surf. And consume content. Scroll, stop, read, scroll, stop, read. Nowhere in there is the first interaction to use social media a click. We are being decommissioned in the knowledge base or the behavior base of being click first. Okay, even on our phones it's tap, right? It's not the action of actually clicking. And there is a difference between that even if you don't think there is. So when we go to a website and we hit that homepage and there's a little bit of content and then there's nothing more until you go and find that little burger menu in the top right-hand side to actually click on that, find the menu item, click on that, go into the next page, scroll a little bit, then go back to the menu, right? It's not a great user interface for a society that's been conditioned to now be scrolling endlessly. So how do we combat that? Well, there's been a lot of change in the web design world and a lot of companies and businesses have already come on board to understand this ahead of the curve. We're seeing longer form content homepages. In fact, we're seeing websites that are only one page. They're longer, all the different sections. So, you know, you got your homepage content, your initial header, your H1, Then you've got maybe an about, you know, just think of a traditional website. You got your about page, then you got maybe your services page, and then those might be broken down into deeper services. Then you may have a blog, then you may have a contact page, and there's a bunch of other ones that would be, you know, outliers of that, but those are usually the main ones that you would see. So now think about this and reconstructing this into a long-form homepage, right? You still have that initial, Header image, the H1, the, the main call to action at the top. Scroll down a little bit, now an About section that's in there. Maybe you're going to list your team out in there. Okay, now we go down a bit further, Services, right? Those are then down there listed out below the About section. Move down a little further, all your blog articles are being injected in there, right? Maybe not all of them, but maybe like the top 4, the top 8. And then there's navigation to be able to go through to the next one. Now keeping in mind, this doesn't mean that you can't have subpages, right? You can have your main, you know, this is our team, maybe a team photo, and you want to say learn more about our team and link there. That's okay. I'm not saying you need to take away your ability to link into other pages, but what we want to do is we want to pull out the best. We wanna pull out the main navigation and make it all scrollable there on the homepage because people are gonna hit your page and they're gonna scroll because that's what they are used to doing. And they're gonna scroll through until they find something that's interesting or something that they were looking for. Think about the last time you went to a major mall. When you walked in that main entrance, there's usually a map there. Now they're interactive, you can actually touch them and search, but the mall map is the idea of when you come in the front door, come to your homepage, this is listing where everything is, right? You can quickly see it, and then you wanna go further, you can get more information from there. So it also doesn't mean that you have to get rid of the main navigation. The navigation can still be there because we are in a transition zone where there are consumers out there who, have grown up in that menu mentality and are still gonna look on that. The difference is now you're gonna be linking a menu item not to another page, but you're gonna be linking it to an anchor link to a section on the page. What that means is when you click on that link, the page will then auto-scroll to that section. So you click on About, boom, the page is gonna auto-scroll until the top of the About section, and then you can consume it from there onward. Or you can scroll back to the top. Those are some of the, the things that you're going to be seeing a lot more of. And if you take the time to start to implement those now in your business, now that you're home and you can spend some time looking at your website, spending more time thinking strategically about how people use it and not the way that you think people should use it— there's a difference. The consumers Your audience is going to tell you how your marketing should be. You should never be telling people or your prospective customers how they should consume your content. They know how to consume content. The world has programmed them to do it. So it's a different mind shift. Think about that. Okay, now what are you going to do? What's your takeaway from this? Take a look at your website. On your mobile device, because mobile traffic is number one right now, and is it a great user experience? Is it a great way to consume that content? How much content can you consume without actually having to click on a link? If there is a good amount, the majority of the content is able to be consumed on that homepage, you're doing a great job. If it's not, it's time for some improvement. So that's all I wanted to share with you today with your website, with thinking about your content. Stay safe out there, wash your hands, stop hoarding toilet paper. The toilet paper is not going to save you from any of this. There's a lot of people out there who need it just for their day-to-day lives who aren't able to find it. And if you had any kind of leisure travel over the next couple of weeks or months, please consider rescheduling, canceling, to save the health of those who are immune deficient or the elderly. Thanks for listening. And if you want to find out more about what we do, go to AmplifyMyContent.com.
Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast. If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to AmplifyMyContent.com.
