Tag Archives: web content

Website Content – 5 Questions You Should Ask About Your Home Page

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Your website home page is likely to be the first thing somebody sees when they reach your site – your shop window, if you like. You need to create a good first impression, give people a reason to ‘come in’ and help them get to where they need to go. That’s a lot to ask for one page. That’s why as a website content writer I often find that home pages take the longest to produce.

website content south west

 

Poorly executed home pages are really setting your site up to fail at the first challenge so, if you’ve never given that much thought to yours, try these questions:

1. Does your home page make it clear what you do?

Sorry if this sounds a bit obvious but it’s amazing how often you have to wade through loads of website content about awards, history and other things that don’t matter that much to get to a simple, straightforward statement of what a company actually does. Take an honest look at yours – if you were an outsider reading the page for the first time, would you be able to grasp what you do immediately you land on the page?

2. Is it welcoming?

Department stores spend a lot of time and money on window displays – because they know this makes a difference to the number of people who decide to enter the shop. I’m the world’s worst ‘head down get it over with’ shopper, but even I get distracted by a creatively dressed shop window. If your home page is your shop window, would I stop or would I keep charging past? If your page is no more than a header image, some navigation buttons and a slab of text, is that really going to engage anyone? But don’t be tempted to be too clever or gimmicky. Rotating header images and Flash animations popping off all over the place may look clever, but are fundamentally just a distraction and, in my view, have no place in good website content.

3. Does it ‘explain the difference’?

Unless you’re very lucky there are other people who do what you do. But they won’t do it exactly the same way and there will be unique and compelling features of how you do business. Again, is the difference immediately apparent in your home page content – or do you just sound like all of your competitors?

4. Do people know where to find what they want?

Are you expecting people to work out for themselves which of the navigation buttons they need to click? Or do you make it blindingly obvious where people need to go to find the information that interests them? This is also an issue for the overall structure of your site and for planning your website content. If you have a diverse offering and work in different sectors, people need to be directed to their specific content without having to think too much about where it is. Plan your industry or service-specific pages carefully and provide easy to find links from the home page. Industry-specific images with the link can help people find their way around and give an instant visual clue that they are on a site that is relevant to them.

5. When they’ve finished reading the page, what next?

In planning your website content you should be clear about the actions you want people to take. Just make it clear what you expect. Keep your calls to action simple and super-easy to find. Bold buttons that say: ‘Click here for your on-line demo’; ‘Get a quote’; etc are hard to miss and impossible to misunderstand.

A lot of website content still seems to see the home page as ‘something that has to be there’ rather than a critical stage in the process of engaging customers. All the effort seems to go into the pages describing products and services. Not much point if nobody ever gets that far.

Richard Hussey, Owner, RSH Copywriting

Based in the South West I help smaller businesses achieve more from on-line marketing through engaging content and intelligent use of on-line publishing. See more: copywriter South West

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Why you Need an Online Content Strategy

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Anything that can take a website from getting virtually no traffic to getting several hundred hits per month has to be worth looking at. This type of experience is actually typical for businesses which adopt a well planned online content strategy. And yet, increased website traffic is just one reason that businesses should think seriously about a coherent plan for publishing and distributing online content.

Content Marketing Strategy

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Are you getting found on the web?

But let’s deal with the traffic issue first. As the internet gets more crowded, setting up a website and hoping people find it through searches is becoming an increasingly misguided approach. No matter how good your on-site Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), it’s still getting more difficult to get found by search alone – unless you are a really big player or in a very narrow niche market.

The value of publishing online content is that you are putting highly relevant and interesting  information in front of people and inviting them to read it. In doing so they link back to your site. These ‘hits’ would otherwise require somebody to decide they need your services and type something into Google that hopefully matches the keywords you have chosen.

Some businesses, copywriting included, don’t naturally generate a lot of search traffic. They need to stimulate website visits. And even for businesses where internet searches are more common, competition for page 1 ranking is likely to be stiff. Getting your share of this natural or organic search traffic can be challenging.

Your content is your SEO

Which brings me to the next big reason for implementing an online content strategy. The Google search ranking algorithms place an increasingly high importance on the number of links to your site, how much your content is shared, and your social media presence. Your ranking is determined by many things that go on outside of your site. You could say that your content strategy should be part and parcel of your SEO strategy. Without publishing regular content, and without generating activity around your site, a high Google ranking will get harder to achieve.

Use content to grow your business

Of course, it’s not just about traffic. The idea is to generate business. One limitation with a static ‘brochure’ website is that, just like a printed brochure, there’s a limit to how much you can say. They can also go out of date. An active blog allows you to look at your services from a variety of angles, illustrating different ways that you add value to your customers.

Blogs naturally keep pace with changes in the market place because you are continually adding new content. Get it right and you can appear ‘ahead of the game’, knowledgeable and focused on your customers’ needs. The resulting increased awareness and trust is a great platform for future sales. Here are a few things to consider when developing an online content strategy:

1. Brand Values. The important messages that sum up what your business stands for need to be reinforced consistently. If you don’t know what these are you may have a bigger problem than a lack of a content strategy.

2. Target products or services. If there are more profitable parts of your business or specific areas you are looking to grow, focus on these.

3. Target customers. Who are they, what’s important to them, what’s the best way to reach them? No point putting stuff all over Facebook if your target customers are on LinkedIn!

4. Key Messages. For each of your target services and your target customers there will be critical messages that you want to get across. These illustrate how what you do and how you do it add real value.

Spend a bit of time analysing these four areas and you should come out with a pretty clear idea of what you need to say, the tools you will use, and the media you will need to spread your message.

Richard Hussey is the owner of RSH Copywriting, which helps small and medium sized businesses achieve results through targeted written content. Find out more.

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We Need to Talk About You

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‘We’ and ‘you’, two very small words that make a massive difference to how well your website content connects with your customers.

website copywriting engages readers

Does your website content lock your customers out?

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Have you ever considered how welcoming your website is to visitors? The number of times you use the word ‘you’, as opposed to ‘we’ could be a good indication. Here’s the sort of website content you often see:

‘On-time deliveries, high performance standards and the approach of dealing with every project and every client uniquely puts us above the rest.  We have a highly qualified team with hands on experience in all major web technologies and frameworks and offer solutions for all business requirements. Our custom web application development can automate procedures and improve business efficiency.’

While not terrible, this approach does miss a few opportunities.  Here’s how it might appear when written from a customer’s perspective:

‘Your business needs and challenges are unique.  We work closely with you to ensure your project meets those needs, is delivered on time, and delivers real value and meaningful results to your business. Our experts match your needs to the most appropriate web technologies and frameworks to deliver customised web applications dedicated to improving your business efficiency and results.’ 

This version says much the same thing but with a completely different focus.

Website content should be written for customers, not you

The main difference when you decide to use more ‘you’ and less ‘we’ is that you have to consider everything you write from the reader’s perspective.  It naturally makes you more empathetic with your customers, ensuring that you consider their issues and challenges and find ways to match your services to those needs.

The alternative is that you write all about yourself and leave your potential customers to make the connection to their needs.  Do you take the trouble to do this when reading other companies’ websites?

Does the focus of your website content reflect the focus of your business?

Too much ‘we’ might also give people the impression that you are internally focused. Too wrapped up in your own technology, processes and issues to have much time to focus on what your customers are looking for.

The thing to remember is that website content should be written to engage a specific readership – people or businesses likely to buy from you. If you are proud of what you do, naturally you want to tell people about it. Unfortunately, that’s not what people on the outside want to know about. They want to know how you are going to help them.

So, have a look at your website or blog and see how often you talk about ‘you’, and decide whether you need to talk a little less about ‘we’. If you’re not sure how to change it around there are plenty of professional copywriters who can help. You’ll be amazed at the difference it can make, not just to how your content comes across, but also to the business you get from your website.

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The More Your Website Content Pleases You – the Less Effective it Could Be

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Who decides what goes in your website content? You? A select group of senior managers? Delegating the content to a small, focused group of decision makers is great for consistency and efficiency. And possibly the worst decision you could make.

Let me explain.

The purpose of your website is to communicate with the outside world. Write it to please yourself and you’re missing the point. Worse still, you’re probably missing countless sales opportunities too. The people who really understand what needs to be in your website content are your customers – and the staff who are dealing directly with them.

I was recently looking at the website of a company selling telephone and communications systems. The content was clear and gave all the information you could ever want on the capabilities and specifications of the systems they were selling. But I’m willing to bet that such things are not the main reasons why customers choose one service provider over another – particularly when there are dozens of providers who could meet their technical requirements.

Website content is for customers

I’m convinced that a bit of research with existing customers would yield a different story and a different message for the website content. If you understood the critical factors that made your customers choose you over a competitor – wouldn’t you want to emphasize those for anyone else that looks at your site?

And what about your sales team? Every sale - particularly solution sales like IT and  telecoms, will have some critical decision points during the process. Taking the time to analyse and document these before chasing the next sale provides a rich seam of persuasive website and marketing copy. How often does this happen? Yet a relatively simple debriefing process could be all it takes.

One argument for hiring a freelancer to write your web content is that they come to the project with no preconceived ideas about your business. It’s often easier for an external, impartial professional to get to the heart of why people really choose to do business with you.

Good marketing is specific

Say you were looking for an accountant to look after your tax returns. Most of them say ‘we save our clients money by ensuring they claim all their available allowances.’ Another says: ‘On average we save our clients £457 on their tax bill by identifying allowances they didn’t realise they could claim.’

The second is clearly more persuasive. The actual figure is irrelevant (but must be true, obviously). The fact that a specific figure can be quoted adds weight to the claim and differentiates you from the mass of companies making similar claims.

If your product or service saves customers money, find out how much they have saved and make sure you tell anyone else who might be considering doing business with you. Perhaps what you sell is more expensive than your competitors – people may still buy from you because you provide better overall value. If so, talk to your customers to understand fully what ‘value’ really means to them and build your website content around that message.

A final thought;  phone a couple of recent customers today (or get me to do it for you) and ask them to give a couple of specific reasons why they did business with you. The difference between what they tell you and the message that you are giving on your website is a measure of the opportunity you are missing.

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What Does A Copywriter Do?

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This is a question I often get asked at business networking events.  Sometimes this is followed by me clarifying that it is nothing to do with intellectual property.  Copywriting and copyright – not the same thing but an understandable confusion, I suppose.

This type of confusion may explain why the difference that a professional Copywriter can make to your business is not always fully appreciated.  People rarely question the value of hiring a Web Designer – they self-evidently have technical and creative skills that smaller businesses often lack.  But writing seems to be different.

Business owners and leaders have a detailed understanding of what their businesses do.  And, because we all learn to write at school, putting that understanding together as the content for the website or corporate brochure isn’t something they feel they need to pay somebody to do.

There are a couple of problems here.  The first is time.  Many Designers I have spoken to express frustration that customers who generate their own copy usually struggle to find time to put content together alongside their other responsibilities.  Deadlines get compressed and quality suffers as a result.

More importantly, however, a professional will do the job better. It is often easy to spot websites where companies have produced their own copy.  Assuming there are no spelling and grammar mistakes (not always the case, sadly), content is often quite a long description of everything that the company does.

Often, the first thing a Copywriter does is decide what doesn’t need to be written at all.  Any publication or website needs a clear purpose and message – anything not directly related to that is just clutter.  A Copywriter will work with you to identify the critical messages about your business.  A Copywriter will also try to look at your products or services through your customers’ eyes: what benefits and selling points are going to address their issues? What language will they find compelling?

Providing information and communicating are not the same thing.  Communication is about organising information and using language in a way that enhances the reader’s understanding and inspires them to do something.  This is the essence of what a Copywriter does.

To paraphrase Eric Morecambe: we use the right words in the right order to help organisations improve their sales and performance.  Put like that, it doesn’t seem quite so dispensable, does it?

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