We live in a time when so much of commerce and marketing is focused on design. If it’s not clean and streamlined with a pleasant color palette, you can lose potential customers, and this is especially true with your website.
However, once you’ve hooked consumers with your dynamite set up, you still need to reel them in without breaking the line: that’s where web content comes in.
Surprisingly, people think adding content to their website is as easy as writing up a few quick phrases on their own, then pasting them into their CMS, but if you want it to be effective, there are some key things you should incorporate with your content.
Your Company Personality
There are hundreds of ways you can portray the style, attitude, and personality of your company through words. So before you get carried away filling up as much space as possible, take a step back and think about the kind of relationship you want to have with your customers.
Whether it’s friendly or professional, energetic or reassuring, come up with a consistent approach. Will you address them directly? Will you refer to your company as “we” or “they” or “it”? What types of words are going to get visitors to connect with the spirit of your company?
Have you got it sorted out? Great, now let’s get writing!
Your History
Before you get tied up in product descriptions and deviate from the personality you just laid out, write what you know. Figure out exactly what it is you want customers to know about you and your business and warm up that personality.
While you’re spouting off dates, breakthroughs, and prestigious projects, let your company personality show through so you get customers to feel like they can be part of the amazing journey you’re on.
Your Home Page
Because your homepage is your home base, you want to make your company shine without bogging it down in too much content. Make use of telling images while you limit your text.
But even though you’re limiting text to keep the site looking clean, that text should still be powerful. Phrases should be geared toward welcoming visitors in (using that company personality) while alluding to more information on that particular topic further into your site.
Your Details
Now that you’ve got the big picture covered, it’s time to narrow in on your specific products and services. If you’re not offering direct purchase through your website, the website design you have won’t hide very well your sparse service descriptions.
Remember that you don’t want to bombard visitors with too much text, so split up anything bulky into separate sections that are possibly accessible once you click further in. And those explanations should showcase the product with awesome facts and personality as well.
Your Layout
Some last big-picture thoughts to keep in mind when writing content: anything you write should be open to alterations because your first draft doesn’t always complement the website design.
A paragraph you thought you had aced content-wise might in fact end at an awkward spot on the web page or feel disconnected from media in the same section, so be prepared to reword and tweak as necessary. If someone else is handling image and video content, work collaboratively so the final product looks like it sprung into existence that way.
