Marketing

Its all about the content!

Site design and functionality are a huge part of getting the right customers to your company through your website, but content is just as important.

A green highlighter highlighting the word "Content"

Site design and functionality are a huge part of getting the right customers to your company through your website, but content is just as important. You want your great looking site to be backed up by a strong message, but deciding which information to choose can be overwhelming. You want to give your customers access to a lot of information, but it also has to be simple enough for them to process.

The first step in developing content is establishing a strong key message. You want a theme that the rest of your content can grow from. After you find a foundation that represents your company, map out additional material — but be sure to keep these three touchstones in mind throughout the process.

Accuracy

This seems obvious, but we’ve all seen companies fail at getting the simple details of their website right. How often have you tried to call a business and realized the phone number on their website doesn’t work? Or been directed to the wrong place by the Google Maps link? Or checked the business hours of a company online, then shown up to find them closed anyway? When a customer sees that you don’t keep your own website updated, they lose confidence that you can meet their needs. Luckily, this is a simple fix: As soon as you make a business change, be sure your website reflects it. And, unless you have a system for updating your site quickly and easily, prevent problems from coming up in the first place by selecting website content that’s unlikely to change often.

Relevance

Be sure to put yourself in the place of your customer when deciding which content to include on your site. You may be very proud of a new technology or of your company’s new headquarters, but ask yourself whether that’s what your customers will be looking for. You’ll find that some information fits better on social media than at the core of your website. It’s also worth thinking about how relevant your information will be to a search engine. Often, just a few key word choices can be the difference between floating higher in a customer’s search results or disappearing altogether.

Personality

A little information about what makes your company unique can help prime your customers for a more personal interaction with your business. It strengthens your connection, and they’re more likely to be loyal to you in the future. Think about large, successful corporations: Starbucks is friendly and efficient. Walmart is bustling and budget-friendly. Chevy is strong and hard-working. These personalities come through in everything these companies do, including their website content. Your personality might come through in small touches, or it might be front-and-center, depending on your company’s needs.

Carrie

About Carrie

Carrie has been copyediting and writing for fifteen years. Her skills were forged in the newsroom at The Birmingham Post-Herald and she’s a huge book nerd (she moonlights as Southern Living’s book reviewer), but a love of paper and ink hasn’t stopped her from mastering the digital world as well: She’s had a blog pretty much since they existed, and she’s run social media for companies big and small. Carrie’s always ready to take on a new communication challenge, lecture us about the proper use of semicolons, or defend the fact that her Instagram account is filled with selfies.

See more articles from Carrie Rollwagen

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