The design and layout of your web site is important, but your potential customers are visiting your site to see the goods or services you can offer them. Content is what drives traffic to your site, so you must ensure that the information you place on your web pages is engaging and relevant to the customers you are trying to attract.
Scanning not reading
Writing for the Web is different from writing for print, mainly because people don't read online - they scan the content. Therefore, the content you publish on your web site needs to be more scannable than it would be for a print publication.
You may need to revise or possibly rewrite your existing text to suit this style.
• Write concise sentences.
• Keep paragraphs short.
• Use subheadings to break up content.
• Use list formatting when possible.
• Provide a summary or overview of key points for longer articles before providing the details.
• Avoid using all capitals for titles.
• Provide clear, concise calls to action.
• Keep layout and formatting to a minimum.
Less is more
Space is valuable on your web site and should be made use of, but if you fill every inch of your page with blocks of text, animated bouncing icons and flash media fireworks, you'll give people a headache. Too much information is distracting and can result isn a slow upload causing people to leave your site before it is even loaded!
Getting rid of all those words that no one is going to read has several beneficial effects:
• It reduces the noise level of the page.
• It makes the useful content more prominent.
• It makes the pages shorter, allowing the users to see more of each page at a glance without scrolling.
Two ways of reducing the the amount of words on a page are the removal of any happy talk and needless insturctions.
Happy Talk
Happy talk is the introductory text that's supposed to welcome us to the site and tell us how great it is, or to tell us what we're about to see in the section we've just entered. Happy talk conveys no useful information, and it distracts the user from what is really going on on the page.
Needless Instructions
The main thing to understand about instructions is that no one is going to read them - at least not until the user has tried and failed a number times. And even then, if the instructions are wordy, the odds of the users finding the information they need is pretty low.
When designing your web site your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close as possible. When it is necessary to have instructions keep them to a bare minimum.
Keep making more content
The content that you place on your website must also be regularly updated. If your site has the same products and information week in and week out, you'll see a clear reduction in traffic.
The content you create for your site's pages is an ongoing process that you should make a priority. Even small changes to your homepage can secure a surprisingly high level of repeat visits, as customers want to know what else you have that they might be interested in. Over time, these customers will become your regular customers as they know that your site will contain new products or services that are going to interest them.
Relevance is also a major factor in keeping potential customers on your website. You can't create compelling and engaging content if you don't know who your customers are, or what they are looking for from your business. Always strive to understand your customers in as much depth and detail as you can. This information can then be used to improve your existing website, or enable you to build a new one that will attract and hold your customers.
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