| You've expended a
tremendous amount of effort building your business. You've invested countless hours making
sure your products and services meet the needs of your customers. You've moved into the
21st century by developing a Web site to help your business grow. Is there more you can do
to make sure your e-business continues to grow and thrive? You bet! Constructing and maintaining a Web site is just part of
the picture in today's highly competitive world of e-commerce. To reap the rewards of your
investment in cyberspace you have to encourage individuals to visit the site. You must
then show them that it's worth their valuable time explore your site and return to it time
and time again. (You're shooting for site "stickiness." Read more in our article
"Getting Visitors to
Stay: You Have Five Seconds."
So what's the secret to attracting
visitors to your site and encouraging them to become regular users? Experts agree: it's
content. All the fancy graphics and flashy animation in the world won't make much
difference in your site's stickiness unless there is substantial content to attract and
inform users. Ensuring the very best content for your site is not a difficult task, but
there are some techniques that will help you achieve your quality-content goals more
easily.
Create Content Specifically for Your
Audience
Before you begin to create content for your
site, be sure to identify your target audience and then gear the content toward them.
Consider their varying levels of interest and expertise in the subject matter as well as
appropriate reading-comprehension levels. In some instances you may need to divide content
into levels, sections, or sub-pages on your site so that users can navigate through the
information at a pace that is comfortable for them.
It's also a good idea to use your home or
index page as a place to specifically indicate the purpose and general content of your
site. This will provide an easy way for first-time visitors to either determine that the
site contains what they are seeking or that they need to look elsewhere.
For more detailed information see this month's
article "Producing
Content for Your Targeted Market".
Keep It Simple
You're excited about the products or services
you offer your client, so it's natural that you'll have a lot to say. But your site will
be much easier for users to comprehend and navigate if you keep your pages simple. Too
much information crammed into a small space can be intimidating and confusing.
- Present just a few items on each page with
concise and easy-to-understand brief descriptions about each. If you need to include
additional, more detailed information, do so on subsequent pages.
- Make sure that the information you present is
actionable (they can act on it to improve their lives or experience), contributes to your
users' knowledge, and hits areas of interest appropriate to them.
- Use your Web space to develop yourself as an
expert in your field. Your content can present public relations, sales, and customer
relationship management opportunities
- Keep information factual. Opinions are for
editorials.
- Use graphics to support content, but use them
sparingly to prevent slow page downloads. Remember that some of your users may be surfing
the Internet with slow connection speeds. If you pages don't load in thirty seconds or
less, it's quite likely that visitors will become frustrated and move on to a faster
loading Web site. This is particularly true of fancy video and audio components; with slow
connections, these appealing but download-time-intensive elements seem to take forever to
pop up on the screen.
Edit
and Proofread Content
The very best content in the world won't impress
visitors to your site if it's full of typographical and spelling errors. Check and double
check everything before it goes "live" on your site.
- Above all else, make sure that the information
you present is correct. Check the reliability of your references, and for extra insurance
only include information on the site that is verified by at least three different sources.
- No matter how carefully you may read and re-read
content you've written, it's very easy to overlook errors because the material is familiar
to you. Consider having a professional copyeditor go over your copy, or at least enlist
the help of someone who is highly proficient in matters of structure, grammar, and
spelling.
- Proofread final copy in the form in which it will
appear on the site. This is not a substitute for copyediting, but rather is simply
designed to catch typographical errors, accidental duplications, and so forth. It will
also help you catch broken hyperlinks!
- Test the finished pages with your Web browser
before they actually go "live" on your site. This will uncover errors in HTML
coding and will also let you view the actual pages the same way visitors to your site will
see them.
Arrange Content Logically
It's important that content flows logically from
general to specific information. Mentally revisit your elementary-school English class for
a few moments and recall when Mrs. Grumpy taught you the fundamentals of creating an
outline. This is an excellent way to ensure a good content flow. It might be helpful to
actually create an outline of your basic site content for display, to get a better idea of
how to best structure your presentation.
For example, your index page could contain a
brief general introduction, followed by a series of hyperlinked subsections that provide a
brief description of the content users will find on succeeding pages. This will make it
very easy for them to locate exactly what they are looking for, and this ease of
navigation will encourage them to return to the site time after time.
Think
Globally
Now that you've launched your business into
cyberspace, remember that on any given day, your site may attract visitors from all over
the world. A little extra effort on the front end of your Web-site development to conform
with the international nature of the Internet will frequently help you reap rewards in the
long run.
- Avoid "America-centric" content where
possible. If content is slanted toward a U.S. perspective, users from other parts of the
world could feel "left out."
- When writing and editing text, don't use
phrasing, expressions, or colloquialisms that may be difficult for users in other parts of
the world to understand.
- If your products or services are designed to
appeal to the international market, it may well be worth the investment to offer visitors
to your site a translation option, so they can view your site in their own language. See
our article "Translation
Option Translates to More Sales" for more information.
Provide
Additional Resources
In some cases you may choose to not include
information on your site that users might find useful. In such cases it's a good idea to
provide hyperlinks or URLs to non-competitive sites where users can easily gain access to
this more detailed information. Even if visitors don't find the information they want on
your site, if they know your site will provide a doorway for them to find what they're
looking for, it's likely they'll be back on a regular basis.
It's essential that you make sure any hyperlinks
you include function properly. Nothing is more frustrating for Web surfers than to click
on a hyperlink only to receive a "Page Not Found" error message. It's also a
good idea to periodically test hyperlinks to make sure they are still active.
Aim for Interactivity
Few things make a Web site more attractive to
users than the opportunity to interact in some way with the site. You can provide
interactivity in a number of ways.
- Provide definitions and FAQs. Information is the
Number 1 reason individuals surf the Web. By providing a means for users to locate
information and answers to common questions, you'll make your site a valuable tool for
them.
- Provide a feedback forum, either with a guest
book or an email link so that visitors can post opinions and observations about the site.
This will give you invaluable insight for fine-tuning your site. But be sure someone in
your company frequently checks postings and answers the site's email.
- If your resources will permit, you might consider
providing visitors with an email address for an individual they can contact for
additional information or to ask specific questions.
- You can also include other useful content from a
number of online sources, including weather, stock tickers, news, and a variety of
entertainment features. Most of these services are provided at no cost to Webmasters. A
few that you may want to check out include:
Generating top-quality content for your Web site
doesn't have to be difficult. But it does involve numerous considerations and "tricks
of the trade." You may already have one or more individuals in your company who are
well-qualified to take on the task. But if not, the investment to outsource content
development and maintenance to a professional service will likely pay for itself many
times over. Services offered by companies like The
Write Edge can help you take your site from initial concept through necessary design
phases to launch. In the long run, making such an investment in your business's Web site
could prove to be as wise a decision as the initial one you made to venture into the
future, the world of e-commerce. |
