Beyond website design and build
So you employ the best web designers and programmers to build you the biggest and the best, all singing all dancing, with bells and whistles on, website that can possibly be built. You launch it, sit back and wait for the visitors to come, and they don't!
So what's wrong? Have the designers not designed it funky enough, have the programmers not built it well enough? Maybe the truth could lie a little closer to home than you think. The true value of a website lies not only in how well designed and produced it is, but also on the value of the content.
By their very nature people visit a website to find information of some form, so if you don’t get this right then even the best design will not gain you the visitor levels you desire. In a recent article in .NET magazine Dan Mall (Interactive Director for HappyCog) is quoted saying that "The problem [with content] was, and still is, value. People need to know how useful a site is and fast." Making that first impression count by showing the user exactly what they want to find, not what you think they want to find is critical.
For this reason the same amount of time if not more needs to go into planning the content as goes into designing the website. If content isn't structured in a useful and valuable way, your user will quickly become disillusioned with your site and go else, most likely to one of your competitor.
The true art of providing high value content is making sure you have identified your audience and that your providing the content they want to find in a way they want to find it. Not what you as an organisation think they want to find and how you expect them to find it. One of the key principles to getting this right is simply to listen to your audience. Research your potential users, find out the reasons for why they would want to find your site, what they would want to find when they get there and how they would expect to find it and navigate around it.
It can be a common mistake for the content creators to create content focused to the organisation that relies on a level of knowledge that the general public can't hope to follow. Quite often this can be combated through the use of a copy writer, some one who sits externally to the organisation. By using a copy writer who is unfamiliar with the organisation involved, they will through this very nature be more adept to writing the content in such a way that the general public will understand.
There are a number of key things to bear in mind when creating your website content of which I have listed some below:
- Focus
Don't try to be an all in one solution, particularly if you know exactly what your audience wants. Visitors love clear purposes online so if you say you are the premium retailer of teddy bears don't try to sell kitchen appliances at the same time. If you dilute the message of your website, you will inevitably loose repeat visitors.
- Highlighting
Highlight the key areas in your website, if your audience want to find some thing, make sure you highlight where they can find it. Use terminology that is common place with the audience, not your office buzz words. Just because you call it 'Company Twitter', it’s still plain old 'News' to every one else.
- Avoid Roadblocks
If your user journey does not flow properly; review your content first. What is it the user is trying to find? Is your content guiding them as they require? Quite often if is not the physical structure of the site and links that results in a roadblock but more so that the content of the page does not make it clear as to the next step in the user journey.
- Validity and Relevance
An obvious one really but make sure the information you're putting into your site is valid and relevant for your site. The key point to remember here is, if your audience don't need to know it then is it really worth putting it in.
- In Depth Read Through
Make sure you read content thoroughly before publish. More often than not there is an urge to put your website live as soon as the build is completed but all this hard work could be undone if you don't review the content once its in place. Read it, tweak it, read it and tweak it some more.
If you can get your website content right before you launch your website, not only will your site encourage visitors, it will encourage repeat users. However don't leave it there; the web is an ever evolving environment, and you need to evolve your content to keep up with it.
So the saying "if you build it they will come" really needs to be updated to "if you build it, review it, manage and maintain it, then they will come"
This blog post was written by Shane
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