Jan 14 2008

The most important thing about your website

Published by Andrew Millar at 2:46 pm under General

Fact: content is the most important thing about your website.
What is meant by “content”?
Everything on the site that a person browsing your site can see and read - all the words, the images, the titles, and the navigation links.
 

Overview
People (hopefully your customers) won’t be interested in your site unless the content is:

  • interesting and relevant.
  • accurate and up-to-date.
  • well written (good English).

They won’t return to read it a second time unless it’s obvious that the content is regularly updated, and added to. It’s common to think of a website of a brochure - you create it, and then leave it alone for two or three years. That’s rarely a good approach. People’s perception of a website is more like a magazine than a brochure. If you pick a magazine which is 2 years old, your are much less likely to read it, or pay attention to what it says, than if its on the shelf in a newsagent. More and more websites are live and dynamic, with daily updates. 
Furthermore, all the above applies not just to your customers, but to search engines as well. So unless you have good content on your site, not only will your customers not read it, but they wont be able to find it!
Tips to improve your site content

  • Relate the site to your marketing strategy.
    • What are you trying to communicate?
      What do you want your customers to know? What do they want to know?
      Think of this as an unfolding and expanding story. If you business is to grow, so must its message to the world.
  • Set up a schedule and manage it.
    • Decide how many resources you can afford to spend on creating your site content, and create a schedule whereby it gets done weekly. This isn’t a technical issue: it’s a managerial issue. Make sure responsibility, authority and resources are properly planned and defined. It might as simple as saying to yourself, I will spend one hour each Friday doing it” or making it part of someone else’s job description, and making sure that editorial responsibility/authority is clear.
  • Don’t forget about images as well as text.
    • These could be photos, or perhaps charts or graphs, but as well the words on your site, you need to keep thinking about how else that information can be presented.
  • Don’t be afraid to quote useful information from other sources (with their permission if required).
    • Quote the source.
      Link to the source.
      Comment on the content. This is important - don’t just regurgitate and duplicate other content. Analyse it and add your on take on the subject.
      Make sure the source is reliable - and say why its reliable.
  • Use experts.
    • If you don’t have the time or expertise in-house, find someone else!
  • Use a Content Management System.
    • If you plan to edit or add content to your website this is a must. Passing content to your web developer every time you want your site updated, is expensive and far too much hassle.
      If you have multiple contributors and require sign-off before publication, you need a Content management System that has that functionality.
      Blog software (such as WordPress, which is what you are looking at now), is an alternative to having your whole website CMS enabled. It may well be that a portion of your site is static and the rest is dynamic. In that case a blog (you don’t have to call it that) is a great way to add content.
  • Make it interactive.
    • Once you get traffic to your site, involve it.
      Use polls and surveys, or questionnaires, to shape future content.
      Interactivity makes a site feel alive - it does something, especially if you respond to the contacts you get.
  • Writing for the web.
    • Style depends on your business/site. It can be formal or not, but the key thing is that the style is consistent. This is especially important if more than one person contributes the content. Either an editor will need to review everything, or make sure different styles are quoted and highlighted appropriately. For example you may hire an expert to write some content on a particular subject. You need to either edit that to make it read like the rest, or quote it as an article from your expert, in which the different style makes sense.
      Grammar and spelling are important.

The most difficult thing is getting started. You can spend a long time planning….what to write about, who do it, when to do it, what to write about it. Often the best thing to do it is not to dwell too long on these issues. Make a start aland let your approach evolve, but dont forgetto review and plan based on how it has gone so far.

 

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