How to create a great website, pt 3: Writing content April 30

Websites are created to provide content to it's visitors. Content is king, they say. Everything else (design, system) is just the packaging. Content is normally what your site visitors are looking for. So the key for creating a great website is to provide accurate and interesting content -- texts, pictures, audio or video.

To be more precise, content must be accurate and easy to digest, interesting and memorable, work well for search engines and it must also be fresh and updated. Once your content is already so good, then why waste your talent by using it only once, only on your website?

Accurate and easy to digest

When writing a piece of text, try to think like your readers. Write to your customers, visitors of your site. Use accurate wording. Straight-to-the-point texts and descriptive, short menu items work best. Cut corporate gibberish, talk like your customers would. Otherwise they wont find you in the first place. And if they somehow still stumble upon your site, they still wouldn't understand your talk. That's why they wouldn't stay.

People don't read websites. They "scan" the screen until finding a relevant phrase. If there is too much text to scan or they don't see what they are expecting, they move on. Break your texts up into short sentences and small paragraphs.

Choose headlines carefully. Any headline should say as much as necessary and as little as possible about the page it summarizes. Again, choosing right language is important. "How to make paper flowers" -- for children's origami site, but "Origami folding instructions: rose" -- for specialist series. "10 fresh typefaces" -- for typophiles, but "10 cool new fonts" -- for everyone else.
 
Use relevant imagery. A picture is worth a thousand words. So if possible, leave some paragraphs unwritten and use an appropriate picture or a video instead.

Organize your site structure wisely. Use common menu item names (Home, Products, Services, News, About us, etc). Limit site menus to a maximum of 6-8 items on each level. Standard human brain just won't get hold of more at a time. No, you don't have to reorganize your business because of that. Just group your 25 products into 4 sections. Whether you do it by product line, target group, year or something else doesn't matter much.

Interesting and memorable

To get people to link to you and to get your visitors to return, the site must be adding value. Instead of pushing your marketing message, provide your visitors something that draws them back for more. A blog where you speak your mind

openly would be a good start. Detail rich product catalogues would be another. The more content you provide, the bigger is the chance someone finds it helpful. Of course if it's still well organized and easy to digest.

Be memorable. Transform your core message into a slogan, a brand. Something that is easily remembered, sounds unique enough, is short and clear. "Books for the enlightened few" -- for an arrogant science publisher. "Slow life with mozzarella" -- for a small Italian cafeteria. "Frogs meet children" -- for nature classes. Learn from advertising but don't try to go deep if you don't think of yourself as a copywriter.

Use illustrations to colorize the otherwise dull-looking blocks of texts, video / audio to grab wider audience. Not everyone likes to read these days.

Don't speak alone. Collect customer cases or testimonials if your business is about offering a service. Collect product reviews if it's about selling products. But be cautious. There's a fine line between helpful user opinions and stupid praise.

Works for search engines

About 40-50% of the visitors to a well organized website is driven search engines. Other half of the traffic is made up of direct visitors and those coming from sites linking to yours. Therefore it's crucial for any site to appear in the search results and be interesting enough for others to link to it.

Search engines are still no good in indexing video, audio and picture content. First and foremost you need to have textual content which Google would show in its search results. You need to include appropriate keywords in your texts that would match search terms of you potential customers.

Texts that are interesting and appropriate in the eyes of your potential customers, work similarly well for the search engines. Write interesting content, so that people link to your site. It both increases the traffic from linking sites and improves your placement in Google's results.

More on this topic in a separate post on May 21st (Growing traffic).

Fresh and updated

Engage your visitors with the content so they feel like returning -- content must not only be interesting, it must also be fresh and up to date. A good blog, an ever-evolving product section, links to new reviews etc. Site must be lively. It must feel as if someone is working on it constantly with passion. So do it.

Fresh content also helps to gain better placement in search results.

Reuse your content

If your content falls under the above mentioned categories then it's a truly good content. Maybe a portion of it is good enough for using it many times? Once on your site, second time inside your company newsletter or brochure, third time as a part of your presentation at a conference. Why not also as newspaper articles or even as a book -- if there's a portion of unique philosophy in it.

Other stories on creating a great website:

• April 20th: Introduction
  
• April 23rd: Gathering team
• April 30th: Writing content
• May 7th: Creating design
• July 14th: Building functionality
• July 21st: Increasing traffic