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Focus the Content on Your Website
Websites are a bit like Topsy; they start small then grow, and then grow
some more. The usual outcome is that most websites have lost their
original single focus and become something like a library, with content
intended to cover every possible topic. They lose a hard, marketing edge
and become catch-alls.
When you think about how people use a website – and remember that most
people are time-poor in the modern era -
a website should be something
very much like a self-service food outlet where people look at a menu,
quickly choose what they want, and get it then and there.
At one time ‘stickiness’ – the length of time a visitor stayed on a
website, was seen to be a useful metric of how valuable the website was
to its visitors. That concept soon faded, however, when it was found
that the most valuable customers were those who came to the site, made
their selection, paid for it and left. Anybody spending too much time on
the site either couldn’t find what they wanted or was simply ‘surfing’
and seeing what was there.
A site needs to be structured in such a way that its content is focused
solely on what will make it commercially effective. Pretty pictures or
florid prose waste the visitor’s time and prevent them from doing what
you want them to do – buy something.
It would be hard to beat the following summary of this important
principle as it’s published on the US Government website Webcontent.gov
when it cautions web managers to focus on the needs of visitors to their
sites:
“Why This Is Important: As a rule, federal public websites should be
aimed at the public--not at federal employees of a particular agency.
Real estate on your public website – particularly the homepage --- is
valuable and should be focused on the most important needs of the
public, not of agency employees. It can confuse the public to post
information intended for employees.”
If your website isn’t informative and valuable to its visitors it won’t
be an effective business tool. If it isn’t well-organized and easily
searched it will not be making an optimum contribution to achieving your
business objectives.
Websites that work best will
offer their visitors well-organized and clearly-written content. The
words are the important part and other elements such as photographs and
graphics are there to support the words, not to entertain or create an
emotional response. (The exception to this is websites for
charities that often use photographs of hungry children and abused
animals to good effect.)
The development of an effective website always begins with the customer.
Ask yourself what they really want to see before thinking about anything
else. You might think a picture of the factory should be part of your
company’s website, but if it isn’t relevant to customers’ needs it’s
just another useless element that gets in the way.
Don’t put too much information on your site. Only include that which
your customers will appreciate and that will lead them to making a
purchase from you. Edit the content as tightly as possible; every word
takes time to read and for most visitors to your site, time will be
short.
Keep the tone informal. You’re talking to a person and not an audience.
Everybody reads the content of a website as an individual and should be
addressed as such. Using big words when smaller ones will do is a bad
idea; don’t talk down to people but do treat it as a conversation
instead of a lecture.
To really give your website a focus there are three rules you need to
keep in mind:
1. Stick to the Aims of Your Website
Your website most likely has just two basic aims. The first is to inform
people about your business and products so that they’ll be inclined to
buy from you, and the second is to sell those same people something.
Anything on your site that isn’t directly aimed at these two functions
doesn’t belong there.
2. Talk to Your Target Audience
You’re really only interested in catering to the needs of people who’ll
buy something from you. If they’re college-educated and aged from 45 to
60 years of age they probably won’t appreciate references to rap music,
and if they’re aged from 12 to 16 they won’t know much about Mozart or
Beethoven. Every bit of site content should be relevant to those who buy
from you; trying to appeal to everybody or slanting content to the wrong
audience devalues its effectiveness.
3. Relate all Content to Your Principal Business Activities
If you’re selling horses don’t try to show every animal in the farmyard.
Just show the horses. Irrelevant content can be distracting and even if
it might be ‘pretty’ or ‘interesting’ it won’t help you sell something.
Every part of your website should have a direct relationship to what
your business does.
That’s what we mean by ‘focusing the content’ on your website. If you
haven’t already created company’s website the job’s much simpler if you
keep these principles in mind every step of the way. You’ll wind up with
a website that’s powerful and effective.
And if you already have a website, take a good, hard look at it and see
where it needs work to give it a focus. Get rid of anything that’s not
working to sell your business and your products and make sure everything
there will be valued by your customers.
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