Ask yourself why you visit websites. What is it that has you coming back to your favorites? Do you visit CNN’s website for the pictures? Do you visit Amazon.com to check out their stylish logo or admire their cool navigation buttons? Chances are, you probably don’t. You visit these and other sites because they provide you with the information and services that you are looking for.
Certainly the design of a site is important. No one would argue that CNN and Amazon paid no attention to the way their sites look. A good design can not only make a site visually appealing, but can significantly improve the usability of the site. Both Amazon’s and CNN’s sites are very usable and intuitive in addition to being attractive. That’s good design.
But the best design in the world probably isn’t going to save a website if the content is bad. Good content is vital to the success of your website. While the appearance of a site needs to be professional and attractive, if the information you provide is dull and uninteresting your site will never attract very many visitors and it will be unlikely to help grow your business. If you want your website to be a valuable asset for your business then start by giving your users more of what they want to see and less of what you want to write.
Write About Benefits
The most important thing to consider when writing content for your website (or any marketing material for that matter) is how your company helps its customers. What benefits do you provide? Forget about the specific details of your products and services for a moment and ask yourself what’s in it for your clients? What you sell really has little meaning beyond how it can help someone.
Most website visitors are looking for information to solve a problem quickly. They approach a website with one overriding question: “What’s in it for me?” And they don’t spend very long trying to answer it. If your site doesn’t answer it quickly, then they will find another one does, so make sure that your content answers this question from the start.
Your Homepage
Your homepage is the single most important page on your site. It’s where the majority of your users enter your site, and it’s also the place where a lot of people will lose interest in it.
The purpose of your homepage is to hook visitors by providing the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. This, of course, is far from easy, and different users will approach your site with different needs, but if you start to think about things from their perspective and write content that talks about the benefits your company provides and the problems you solve, then you will start to find more people who arrive at your site staying there. Every time you start to describe details and features, create a link to a new page and discuss the details there. That way you can still discuss the specifics of what you sell without detracting from the impact of your homepage.
Every page on your site needs a headline or title, and the headline on your homepage is the most important. This one sentence will often be the only thing that a visitor to your site reads before determining whether your site has what they are looking for. Given the importance of this headline it is imperative that it conveys some benefit to the visitor. Far too many sites begin with “Welcome to my website” or some other asinine comment that doesn’t tell your visitors anything of value to them. At the very least, your headline should try to clarify who you are and what you do. The very best headlines will incorporate benefits as well.
Now that you’ve grabbed a visitor’s attention with a great headline and the promise of wonderful benefits you need to get them to act. What is it that you want visitors to your site to do next? It could be reading a particular section of your site, contacting the company, or completing a survey. Again, focus on benefits: where possible, try to provide an incentive to encourage responses, such as a free report or a special offer.
The Rest of Your Site
Feel free to provide as much information about your company as you want. Some visitors to your site will probably enjoy finding out more about your business. Just make sure that you put all such information in a separate section of the site (such as an “about” page) and not on the homepage.
It’s also a good idea to have a “Contact Us” page with information about how users can get in touch with you and your company. Including telephone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses is a good idea. Opening hours and information about how quickly you respond to inquiries will help to make you appear approachable and interested.
Wherever possible, differentiate your company from your competitors. Try not to do this by criticizing your competition (most people don’t really believe negative advertising anyway), but rather by referring to the benefits you provide. If the benefits are exclusive to your company, so much the better!
If possible use testimonials to back up your claims. Give as much information about the person providing the reference as possible (for example: name, job title, and company). If you’re a new company and don’t have much of a client base, then try some work with a non-profit, or offer discounts and incentives to some potential customers in exchange for a positive reference.
Always address your site’s visitors as individual people. Avoid terms like “some of you,” “many of you,” or “visitors to our site…” Obviously more than one person will visit your site, but your content should always focus on the individual. After all, you have been face to face with many different clients, but (hopefully) you address each one individually when you are meeting them. Your site’s users need to feel that same personalized attention, so make sure that your content provides that.
Check the logs for your website regularly to monitor the performance of different pages. Keep track of which ones see the most traffic and which ones generate the least. Work on improving the content on the slower pages to make them more relevant to your users.
Write in a conversational style. Imagine you’re sitting across the table from a friend and explaining how your business works. Keep your language simple. People tend to say, “help” instead of “facilitate,” “spread” rather than “disseminate,” and “we want to…” instead of “it is our desire to…” Use contractions where appropriate. If in doubt, listen to how you say something out loud. Do you say, “it is not” or “it isn’t?”
If you’re trying to tighten your content up, remove all the adjectives. Using adjectives is the lazy way of trying to convey benefits without giving the subject much thought. Be particularly wary of emotional adjectives like “fabulous,” “wonderful,” “important,” and “exciting.” A visitor will decide for herself whether or not to feel these things. Show them why your products and services deserve these labels and let them be the judge.
Check your spelling, check it again, and check it once more. Then have someone else do it. Nothing will make your site look unprofessional faster than spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
Content writing is not an exact science and you probably won’t hit the nail right on the head on the first try. By focusing on the individual user and by emphasizing benefits you’ll be off to a good start, but by tracking your site’s performance over a long-term period and continually refining your content, you’ll soon find your website is starting to help grow your business.
Posted on
Sunday, October 07, 2007 12:46 PM