When I was growing up I was fascinated with the Myer department store that anchored our nearby shopping centre.

As a kid the only place I naturally was interested in was the Toy Department – why was the toy department always on the top floor? Can’t these adults plainly see that all toys should be at the main entrance?

But no, we kids always had to make it past the overwhelmingly smelly main entrance dominated by perfume counters and makeup then make our way up the escalator (rides!).

There were also three other entrances into the Department Store – the entrance from the Food Court was lined with men’s shoes and accessories, the entrance from the opposite wing greeted you with young men’s fashion, while the entrance from the Car Park made you walk through men’s business shirts. With three of the four ground floor entrances devoted to male fashion, men were clearly the lazier sex – an escalator ride evidently being in men’s ‘too hard basket’.

Of course, this department positioning by Myer was by no means an accident.

Myer was intentionally maximising profit by tailoring products (content) to the subtly different flows of traffic coming in store through each different entrance.

In the same way, not all visitors landing on different sections of your website are equal.

Are you sending all visitors (including kids!) to the ‘perfume counters’ of your main entrance (ie. the homepage)?

Worse – are you treating all visitors exactly the same?

If you’re spending money sending visitors to your website, maximise your digital investment by directing specific visitors to the right ‘departments’.

ps. Here’s how to do it in Adwords. And here’s how in Facebook.