Creating Site Content
Once you have finished your initial information architecture, you will have a good idea of the content you need to write to fill the site.
While online content might easily include videos, audio files, images, or other files, we will focus on the written aspect of content development.
There are some basic ideas you should keep in mind while you write the content yourself, or use as a guide if you choose to hire a copywriter to help you.
Home page vs. deeper page value
In most websites, the home page will have the greatest value. This is the page most people will see and link to, so it needs to shoulder a lot of weight.
The home page needs to say enough to the first-time visitor to encourage them to continue, while still assisting repeat visitors to quickly get their needs fulfilled without being bogged-down, or delayed.
Make sure that the home page answers users’ questions at a glance. Let new visitors or return visitors know that they are in the right place. Two things to establish at a glance: trust and identity.
Deeper pages will gain strength over time, and some will become the entry points for future visitors. This means that while the home page should receive some special attention to establish identity and trust, deeper pages should also be clear, concise, and clearly lead somewhere.
Avoid deeper page dead-ends whenever possible – you should keep them moving toward the goal.
It is not typically a good idea to use a splash page, though many sites in the past did employ them. Similarly, while pop-up screens might be effective for some things, overuse of them can become an obstacle that visitors must overcome.
If you put any kind of hurdle between the user and the site, the user may leave before reaching the destination. Remove the hurdles, and use your content to answer and serve the users’ needs.
Answering user needs
The driving purpose of a website is to answer the user’s needs. Understanding that there may be many interpretations of “needs” and answering to them simultaneously is the key to greater online success.
Web users will arrive to your site needing different things. Use your content to clearly communicate what they’ll find on your site – make the pathways clear to encourage them to either dig deeper or to close the deal. When your content more seamlessly answers to different users with different needs, your site will definitely find more success.
- “The Browser” – A user who is browsing may or may not be buying eventually, but they are usually considering it. However, they may have also stumbled on your site accidentally while surfing. Most often, they are looking around for related content and doing some information gathering. They are relaxed, interested, and willing to read what you have to offer. They are “looky-loos.” These shoppers respond to solid information and will also be interested in who you are and why they should listen. They are trying to decide whether or not to trust you and whether or not they need what you offer. If you answer their initial requirements they will return to the site as their buying process continues.
- “The Comparison Shopper” – A user who is comparing already knows about your product/services. They may have already seen your site. They are focused, and seek clarifications on the details of your offer. They want to see your competitive edge. They are almost ready to buy, so they want to make sure they get the best possible deal. They may look at the fine print of your offers. They may be price comparing. They are likely evaluating you directly against your competitors.
- “The Buyer” – A user who is buying is going to spend the money, whether or not it is with you. There may be a pressing need or situation forcing them to feel somewhat desperate. They are looking for a quick, unencumbered transaction that gets them what they need as quickly as possible. Price is not typically an object to someone who is buying—they know exactly what they need and if you have it, sold.
To answer to all three user groups simultaneously, your content needs confidence. The content needs to assure each visitor that they are indeed in the right place and the information they need to bring them closer to a conversion is easily accessed and readily available.
There are two things to keep in mind that will remain constant for all users:
- Building and reestablishing bonds of trust will be synonymous with success rates
- The content should always be leading or driving to the conversion
Building trust
Users want to feel secure and safe in the sites they visit. They want to be sure that if they are interacting or sharing sensitive, personal information, that they can do so with confidence and safety. They also want to know that the sites they visit are trustworthy.
One of the key ways to quickly communicate trust is through a professional website appearance. Visually, users will scan a page quickly and look for signals of trust. You are well-served by using a professionally designed logo, a clean layout, and high-quality imagery.
In your image selection, match the subject matter to the expectations of your audience. For example, if you are running a site on student vacations, your images would be of students in vacation settings. What this does, is offer the user a chance to use a simple glance to make a connection – “Yes, I am in the right place here.”
Another way to establish a sense of trust is through maintaining an owner’s visibility. When possible, let the user know who is running the site, and how to contact them. When you convince users that someone is going to be found behind the curtain, they will be more likely to engage freely with your site.
Other visuals that can help to build a sense of trust might be logos from trusted, related sources (“As seen in” types of promoting), logos of relative associations (like the BBB in America) and logos ensuring secure transactions if financial transactions occur on the site. Even clips or snippets of satisfied customer testimonials when appropriate can create a positive feeling.
The sidebar areas and footers of websites might carry images and links that lead to this information. Particularly if you are capturing any user information, it is a good idea to have a privacy policy and terms of use statement linked on any page where you capture this information. These pages are explanations of your site’s policies so the users and search engines see how you value and handle user privacy issues.
The level of trust you need to build will vary, depending on what your intentions are with the website. For a site seeking to sell products, it will be important to convey trust that the products are available and of a specific quality, checking-out is easy with no hidden fees and transactions are secure.
Staying with this example of a product-selling website, it may also help conversions to add some content that shares case studies, testimonials, or product reviews. How you connect the content and present it refers back to the information architecture, and your site’s content catering to the three different user groups.
If your site is informational, you could establish trust by providing credentials and qualifications that prove expertise. You could provide contact information, and allow a way for users to engage and become part of the discussions. You could provide relevant, premium ideas for free.
As you can see, how you specifically establish trust will depend almost wholly on your niche, your audience’s expectations, and the goals of your website. However, the need to establish this sense of trust is universal, and should be a defined part of every website’s content development strategy.
Driving to the Conversion
One last thought in developing the content, is using the content to move the user toward conversion. This means that the topics selected should be carefully selected to build two things:
- The “last point of contact” leading to the conversion
- Potential new entry points into the website
The last point of contact refers to the idea that a user may read something, and as a result of what is written be inspired to convert. While this does not mean you need to belabor every page as if it were a complete website, it does mean you want to pay attention to what the users want, and give it to them.
For example, let’s say you notice that users are clicking from your product reviews to a testimonials page and then to the cart. You could perhaps weave testimonials into the content, and thus, close the gap between arrival and conversion. Your content is answering the user needs more completely, and the page becomes a perfect lead-in to a conversion.
New entry points into the website are created when the content written matches the specifics of the queries entered into search engines.
For example, if you’re selling furniture, you might create an article entitled “How to Care for Hardwood Furniture” containing keyphrases important to your furniture sales. When a user types in “How do I care for hardwood furniture” in a search engine, your site’s article creates a direct connection and it appears in the SERPs. As the user clicks on this article link to read more, a new entry point to the website occurs.
While it may seem fundamental to drive toward the conversion, this is actually an ongoing, recursive task that requires a lot of focus to build online success. As a busy webmaster and business owner, it is very easy to lose sight of the goal and become mired in day-to-day activities and issues that are not driving your success.
Periodic, scheduled reviews of analytic data will help you learn what is working and what can be improved with the website. Data will indicate where your site is appearing in the search engines, it will show evidence of issues with code, and it can be used suggest content ideas.
Summary of 7 steps to Create a New Website
By this point, you should be ready to create and launch a simple website.
- Register a domain.
- Choose a hosting provider.
- Select code and a development platform that is safe, and surfs.
- Choose an analytics package.
- Consider your keywords.
- Spend time developing your information architecture.
- Create and post your content.
Creating a functional, surf-safe website full of unique, compelling content is half the battle of being successful online. But it is important to realize, that even the world’s best websites would rarely get seen if they did not perform some degree of optimisation.
Simply having a great resource is not enough: you need to have this website appear where people will find it and engage. You will no doubt put in a lot of time, money and effort to get a solid website up and running. The return on this investment is often realized through the organic search engine success – because your site “naturally” appears to have the most relative content to a specific search query.
In most cases, there is nothing “natural” happening really. The sites you see in the highest positions in the organic SERPs are usually there because they used Search Engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.
The good news, is much like starting your own website, optimising a website is also something you can learn on your own, and do-it-yourself. While it is true that you can apply a sizable and scalable budget to these efforts (especially in a more competitive niche), there are also many things you can do that are not expensive, and many simply require hearing about them to put them into practice.
The rest of this guide will focus on how to optimise your site for the search engines. We will look at the same ideas we covered in the first parts of this guide, yet examine how to approach these topics with an eye trained on optimising. The tactics discussed will give you an edge over the competition, and show you the way to find new levels of online success.