Posts tagged “Content”.
Your website is the number one place anyone will search for when hearing about your company. It's therefore crucial to have your website both constantly updated and done so also in a mobile friendly way as more than 20% of web browsing is done today via mobile devices. 

Google rewards both frequent updates and mobile optimization with a better site ranking.

Browsing web


All websites on Edicy are mobile optimized, responsively adapting to any screen size your visitors use. But this is just one part of being friendly towards your visitors. The other part is readability — interesting and accurate writing.

Websites are rather scanned, not read even by desktop users. The attention span of an average visitor is very short and boredom kicks in easily. This 'disorder' is even worse with mobile users. Therefore you must make sure to produce great content.

Here are a few tips to make your content more interesting:

  • Combine texts with visuals — photos, graphs, videos.
  • Break long text blocks into shorter paragraphs, structure an arcticle into subsections with subheadings.

Which photos to use?

Photos and other visual materials placed to your site should reflect your company and what you do there – telling the story of your product or service and people behind it.

If possible, then instead of making photos on your own, do let professional photographer help you. You can also use iStockPhoto or other similar sources to illustrate your site. Keep in mind though — personal style and unique photos helps you to stand out from the crowd.

Performing content updates

As what I've written in my previous post then most buttons in Edicy edit mode are there to help you to build your site.

You can make smaller online changes without closing or hiding the subpage from your site menu. To do so, just go to "page properties" under page like icon on the right corner of your site, uncheck “publish changes automatically”; add content block with new information; delete the old one when ready and save changes you’ve made. That way you’ll be able to make minor changes online without putting down the whole page for the final users/visitors. When new data has been entered just delete unnecessary parts and push “save” button or check “publish changes automatically”. 

Correct URL and built in SEO tools

While building a site or adding new sub pages It's wise to check also what is the final url – occasionally it might happen, that site content can be updated so, that old URL does not reflect the actual content anymore.  
 
When you're on your blog page then same icon ables you to change the author of the article, publishing date and already mentioned URL. It happens quite often, that users don't pay attention to their blog url and their blog address end's up looking something like that: new_article_23  

And as here already, then do fill in also your page description – giving a general overview of the content on this very sub page in couple of short sentences. Content entered here, will be shown in search results like that: 


 

Oh, and when writing a blog post and thinking of sharing it via social media, then here are some tips to read. Plus it's possible to integrate your social media feeds to your site as we've done on this very page.

The most important part of any company's web presence is — of course — their website. Content is in turn the most important component of those sites. The reason why so many websites are left behind (or even worse, never made) is always the same. People don't know what to write there, how to lay it all out.


We've created Edicy design templates so that you'll have this tough part — initial site structure and default content — in place right away. On the basic level most of the websites are very similar.

Here's our universal cheat sheet for your website's structure that's reflected also in any of our designs.

Main landing page.


  • This is company name or logo.
  • Headline or slogan (describing what you are, do or sell).
  • A short paragraph introducing the business model or proposal of your company. A good guide to think about reasonable length is: "Does it all fit on a smartphone screen?"
  • Key illustration. It is a very good idea to put an image to the first page that describes what you do. You can find a suitable one from iStockPhoto or some other image stock for a small fee. You might even find a logo icon from there.
  • Menu with links to all second level sub pages and alternative language versions of the website.
  • Footer or sidebar with contact information.

Products or portfolio.

In case you have more than one case study presented or product sold, you should start with a separate page for product or case study listing. Each product or case should then have a separate page so visitors can share a direct link to it. It should feature the name, description, some images and a call to action — e.g order the product or get a quote for a similar product.

Contacts.

Separate contacts page will probably show up in search results if someone Googles you, making you easier to find. You should also keep a short version of your contacts on the footer of every page. Edicy standard themes have a footer with shared content among pages. Enter it on a page and it will be automatically on every page.

Blog or news.

Another important thing besides contacts, that web viewers are looking about you, is how active you are. Inactive websites bring less leads because visitors think the same inactivity might be true for the whole business.

Best way to avoid this perception is to run a news or blog page which you'd update at least monthly. No need to write long novels, your customers just need to know you are doing well. Linking to relevant news pieces in mainstream media spiced with short comments from your behalf will make a good blog post too.

So all you'll have to do now is sign up for Edicy and it will automatically guide you through the process of making your first website in a matter of minutes.

By far the most time- and brain-consuming part of website creation is writing the actual content in a well structured and interactively illustrated manner. It looks like a super tough job even to start with. And if someone finally does, he's in constant fear of blowing up his site — because all the tools are so damn difficult. But are they really? 

I'm going to give you some quick tips to thoroughly lighten up your way through content creation. My advice is based on 1,5 years of day-to-day work assisting users from around the world in their website building efforts.

Managing site structure

Site structure.

Each of Edicy's design templates sports a pre-made site structure with some sample content for main page, products and contacts. We've tried to keep it simple and logical, applicable to the majority of small companies.

You can easily add both new pages or even duplicate your site structure into new languages.

Content blocks.

Each page in your site structure consists of some parts that you can edit and some that are pre-determined by design. Editable parts are called content blocks, which can be either a text area, a gallery or a form. You can combine them depending on what information you want to provide to the visitors of that particular page. Get more useful content editing tips from our FAQ page.


When adding text or photos to your site it would be useful to have more than one content block per page – this way you can reorder their locations very easily once such necessity arises.

Edicy image editing tools

Managing photos.

You can show pics on your site either by dragging them into any rich text area or by creating a separate gallery content block.

All the photos on your site can be edited right inside the browser after you've dragged them into a rich text area. You can crop, resize and rotate them. Large photos can be optimized for web right after you've inserted them into text area.

Please keep in mind that once you've changed a photo in one place, it will be changed in all of its locations. If you need different behavior, just upload the same pic for each different location.

File naming conventionsTo distinguish between the photo versions it would be wise to also name the file accordingly. For example john_doe_thumbnail.jpg and john_doe_large.jpg etc. To see all your photos in a single list, go to yourname.com/photos while logged in.

Setting up galleries.

Use galleries if you want to show more than one picture in a row. Pics placed into a gallery can't be edited the way you can edit pics inside text areas. Photos will appear in their original size and you can't crop or rotate them. It's therefore wise to edit your gallery pics in your computer before uploading them to Edicy. It's just easier to work with them that way. You'll find some useful programs for that around the internet.

Saving your edits.

Edicy saves all your edits automatically every few seconds. If you are faster than that, you can also save manually by hitting Ctrl+S or clicking the 'Save' button down below on the right-hand side of the main menu bar. 

Updating your browser.

Please don't forget to update your browser every now and then as this will ease up your life a lot. Old browsers are less secure, slower and they are less capable tools for using any webservices like Edicy. It's rather easy to upgrade and the whole internet is going to look and feel better.

Edicy blog

Life behind the simplest web creation tool

Recent Buzz