Website content can easily be the lost step-child of Website development. In working with hundreds of clients over the past 10 years, this is the area most neglected in Web marketing.
There are several reasons for this. Budgets are not developed properly for content development and most people do not have good writing skills. When you combine this with the fact that even good writers do not know how to write content for the Web, you get bad Website content. The content either reads like brochure content, talks too much about the company, is too flowery sounding, is made up of large blocks of text or just poorly written.
For these reasons, most Web content is not read and we see this repeatedly in usability testing. Here are a few tips to get your content read:
1. Use fewer words to say the same thing.
2. Avoid blocks of text.
3. Make use of well-written headers and bullet points.
4. Focus on benefits, not features. Learn the difference.
5. Write in a language understood by visitors, not internal speak.
6. Go to Amazon.com and read books on how to write Web content.
If you ask users to read your content and give you feedback, they are likely to say that it looks fine. It is better to have them perform a task on your site or look for something; this will give you a better idea of how users scan your Website.
Content is in many cases the most important part of your Website and deserves a solid budget, proper Web writing and feedback from user testing.
