If you want to create a website, you’ll need informative content with an attractive and responsive website design. Despite the popularity of social media, websites continue to be the most important communication channel between companies and customers. If visitors can navigate your website easily and quickly find the desired content after a short loading time, they will have a positive User Experience. This can increase the time they spend on the website and reduce the bounce rate. As a result, you’re likely to benefit from higher conversion rates. It is, therefore, important to follow the current website design standards and the structure of the subpages, i.e. the individual subpages. Internet users usually look for the following headings in the menu of a website:
On each of these subpages you can include the relevant information about your product or service.
Attract visitors with short and snappy texts
The heart of every website is the home page, which is often shown in the menu as “Home” or “Start page”. Anyone looking for a brand or company will usually land on the homepage of the respective website first. Special care must, therefore, be taken when writing your und den welcome message or including attractive images on your homepage. If the homepage looks appealing and has relevant content, chances are that users will continue to browse the site. On the other hand, if the homepage does not make it clear what it is all about, the possibility of visitors leaving the page is greater. The website’s welcome text should ideally be short and snappy, and structured in easy-to-read paragraphs. Keep in mind that most Internet users have little time and often browse through the texts rather than read them thoroughly from start to finish. In order to be able to quickly browse through a text, it should include subheadings, bullet points and bolded phrases..
No one in your company has the time or the ability to write good texts? If so, consider outsourcing this. Templates are available on the Internet for home page texts. However, we don’t recommend using them, as it is important to tailor a text individually to your company and your products. Writing texts for your homepage is an important investment and you should not leave anything to chance.
The most common website subpages and their content
Even individual entrepeneurs often tend to use the common term “about us”, even though “about me” would be more appropriate. In this way, it is not immediately apparent that you are an individual entrepeneur. This part is important to many people because they want to know who is behind a company or a brand. If at least the most important contacts are presented on this subpage, the company will look more real. Of course, you should also clearly explain what your company manufactures and where the head office and production sites are located. Avoid using technical terms and explain in simple words what your company produces or what services it offers. If you have a trusting relationship with one of your clients, you can ask him for a reference on the “About us” page.
Under the menu section “Contact”, the website visitor should ideally find a contact form or information such as an e-mail address or a telephone number. Writing a text for the contact page is not a difficult task, but you should also consider using easily-readable and original texts that are relevant to your business.
If journalists or bloggers write about your products or services, this will increase your company’s visibility. Remember that media representatives mainly do their research on the Internet, and usually have little time to find the relevant information, so make their job easier and make sure they can quickly find the information they want. You can do this by creating a separate subpage called, “Press” or “Media”. Include the names and contact details of the person to refer to for press inquiries.. Furthermore, this page should contain the most important information about the products, the company history and the top players (company director or the like). You should also include photos of the main people involved in the company and add important information, such as the name of the person or the product in the photo, as well as the photographers’ name. All the press releases written by the company should also be accessed via this subpage.
New employees can be found via the career page
If you often look for new employees and maybe even apprentices, a separate subpage “Career” or “Jobs” should be created. On this subpage, you can present the advantages of working for your company in detail. Talk about your company’s story and vividly explain your brand’s unique selling point. Show the human side of the company and give an exclusive look behind the scenes. To strengthen your employer brand, take advantage of your employees’ potential. Get your staff to introduce their workspace in short videos or talk about their careers in the company. If you are currently offering vacancies, you can show or link the jobs on this subpage.
Follow general guidelines or create your own?
In many cases, it is advisable to use unique texts and attention-grabbing images – and march to the beat of a different tune, so to speak. It’s only when you are naming your menu items that you should avoid this tactic. Most people don’t spend much time on a website they don’t like. So if they don’t find their way around within seconds, they will lose patience and leave. When designing a website, however, the exact structure depends on which industry and brand you work with. In the B2B strategy, a website is often structured according to product categories, whereas in B2C, the website is oriented to different target groups. For example, you design clothes that are mainly aimed for teens and adults, with select pieces for seniors. It makes little sense to address all three target groups in the same way. They have different needs as far as the desired information is concerned and expect a different style with the terms they usually use. The content formats can also be tailored to the target group. In the subpage “Teenagers” you can add videos with influencers, while you should provide information about where and how seniors can buy the clothes in their section.
How do I find web users?
Writing engaging content and providing the readers with up-to-date and relevant text is not enough to generate traffic to your website. Identifying the right keywords and incorporating them into the text in a reasonable proportion is essential for the success of the website. The days when website owners used “keyword stuffing” and the search engines fell for it are long gone. The algorithms of the search engines have evolved and can now assess the quality of texts better than ever before. Badly written content with good keywords barely stand a chance. Take the time to do a thorough keyword research, using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends and Google Suggest. There are also various paid and free tools to perform a more in-depth keyword research.
It goes without saying that you should only use keywords that are relevant to your content. Adding popular and successful keywords to lure users to your website will usually have negative consequences. Visitors will quickly realise they cannot find the answers or solutions they’re looking for on your website. As a result, they will quickly bounce off and start their search again on Google. The search engines will register this bounce and if it happens often, your website’s ranking will be lowered.
Keep the search engines happy with continuous website optimisation
Creating a website and providing it with an attractive design and relevant text is just the start. Website optimisation is an ongoing task, as texts should always be kept up-to-date. In addition, the requirements of the search engines are constantly changing, so the on-page and off-page optimisation should always be taken into account. It is, therefore, important to optimise your website for SEO purposes on a regular basis.
Review the content and design of your website often. At the same time, check the older articles and make sure they are still relevant. Update the texts as necessary to bring it in line with your current product offers. Also, regularly check to see if any of the people mentioned on the website are still working for the company. Keep in mind that older posts will still be read if users come across them through specific search terms. Analyse the bounce rate regularly to find out which topics or content formats are less popular with visitors.
Valuable content delight website visitors
Your website content must be informative and provide added value. Why? Quite simply, because there plenty other websites or online stores that visitors can go to with just a click of a button. The magic word is website content management.
You should not only place your products and services on your website, but also offer valuable content on related topics. With useful and informative texts as well as a pinch of storytelling you will delight both your visitors and the search engines. If you successfully establish yourself as a provider of relevant website content, visitors will keep coming back and recommend the content to their friends. In this way, website visitors often become customers in the longer term.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask yourself which topics interest them and for which problems they want a solution. You have no idea what your customers might be interested in? Just ask your colleagues from the customer service department, who answer customer queries via phone, email, or social media. If certain questions are asked again and again, a good answer could be helpful content for the website. You can also evaluate the terms that are entered in the search bar of your website. You don’t have a search bar yet? Then it’s high time you created one!
Score points with diverse website content
First of all, remember that your (potential) customers are very different people. Some like to read informative texts and others are more interested in pictures. Some only like watching videos to be entertained and to obtain information from. There are also those who prefer different content formats depending on the topic and their mood on that day. In order to add value to all these types of users and to encourage them to stay as long as possible, you should work with different content formats..
Take as an example the frequently asked questions that are often answered in the subpage “Frequently Asked Questions”, or FAQfor short. For the text lovers, you should create short and snappy questions and answers that are easy to understand. For complex explanations about using a product, you could link to a descriptive video or use an infographic.
Show the visitors of your website that you’ve put a lot of effort into the small details. For example, there may be times when your website is down or its link is broken. This is when a website maintenance message, which humorously addresses the issue and lets your customers know what’s happening and leaves them feeling good.
Off-page optimisation is about matching links that point to your website. The search engines rate inbound links from well-known and high traffic websites as positive and reward them with a higher ranking.If posts from your website are shared on different social media platforms, this will have a positive impact on search engine results. Use your presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to introduce new posts on your website. In doing so, you should individually review the posts on the respective platform and not use the opportunity to automatically share them upon publishing. Put emphasis on appealing teaser texts that make the reader curious and arouse interest. If customers and followers share your posts on their social network, this will lead to higher visibility and better ranking in search engine results.
Website posts from a single source
A copywriter does not always write all the posts for a website. As soon as different internal or external editors come into play, it is essential to come up with a set of rules for the tone and style of the texts. This involves clarifying basic questions, such as: should you address the customers formally or informally? It would not go down well if the visitors were addressed differently on each subpage they visit. But you can also use an appropriate language for each customer. For example, you can write formally or informally depending on your target group. Service providers who are concerned about their reputation should not use abrupt or inappropriate language. Nevertheless, even a bank or insurance company can use sympathetic and humorous language.
Regardless of your industry and target group, you should always attach importance to error-free posts in your website. Before publishing, thoroughly check both the spelling and the grammar of your texts, and make sure that the words or phrases are not repeated too often. It’s best to allow a colleague to read your texts or use software or test pages on the Internet, such as Copyscape. After all, your text should not only be error-free, but it must also be unique.
Fresh content thanks to the corporate blog
An exception to this rule is a blog. The posts for such a corporate blog can come from different employees. If a content manager reviews and edits the posts from a central location, they will end up with a comparable tone. However, a multi-voiced approach may be more desirable as it increases the appeal of the blog, which reflects the posts from the CEO as well as the brand’s employees. It is important to adopt a familiar pattern when posting fresh content. Posting daily, weekly or monthly is less important than the fact that readers can adjust and rely on the interval. In this way, website visitors get a varied view of the company and its employees. In addition, the regular publication of new content will not be a problem as the task of writing is shared among many people in the company. A good example of such an employee blog is the Perkbox blog, in which the employees of the company have been blogging for many years.
A compromise can be a blog built into a website. Visitors to the website will be pleased to find new posts on almost every visit plus the search engines rate fresh posts positively. . With a modern content management system , you can update your content at any time without any prior programming knowledge.
An accessible website
You can reach many people using a standard website consisting of text and images. If you want to ensure that every visitor can fully understand your content, you should be concerned with your website accessibility. For example, people who use screen readers ) to read content from a website need additional information to understand the images on the page. Therefore, make sure your website has an ALT text for each image. This text describes the content of the photo or graphic and a screen reader can read the text. The old texts also provide the search engines with valuable information about the contents of the pictures. Take care regarding the navigation of the website and the structure of the texts.Remember the widespread red-green visual deficiencies and the fact that many people read in the sunlight using their smartphone or tablet. Therefore, always pay attention to sufficiently strong colour contrasts and don’t use a very small font size.
A well-structured page with regular and meaningful subtitles is clearly more readable for people than plain text. The accessible layout of your website increases its user-friendliness, especially on mobile devices. Some visitors rely on an accessible website that’s more helpful to everyone else.
Make sure you have a good internal linking structure regarding your homepage and the subpages and between the subpages. Ideally, put links to the “about us” page and the “contact” page on the homepage. You can also include links in the description of the individual products or services. In this way, the customers can obtain a more detailed description of the products or can order the goods directly from your online store.
This is especially true if you work with various landing pages, so that the customers do not enter via the homepage, but directly on a special page. Such a landing page may, for example, introduce and offer a particular product or service.
The website content should appeal to visitors and search engines alike with responsive website design. If your texts are relevant and easy-to-read, you will be able to attract lots of visitors and your conversion rate will increase. Copywriters for the website should be well trained and experienced with your subject matter, but also have search engine optimisation and website accessibility knowledge.
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