Website Content is King...

Have you ever heard that saying and never quite knew what it meant? Well imaging a car without an engine, a person with out their organs, a house without furniture.. (ok you get the point) A website without content or poor content is just an empty shell. You need to carefully plan and organise your website content. When writing content for the web, you should aim to get your message acress in about a quater of the words that you would write on paper. A good exercise to practice when writing for the web is to write an artice about something you like. Then re-write the artice maintaining your message but in half as many words. Now, with that halved copy, try and half the number of words again. You will be left with a compact, optimised piece of information ready for the web.

Here are several questions to consider in doing so:

• What do you do?

The home page of your website should make it clear what you actually do, without being overcrowded with too much information. First impressions are made within a few seconds, so if the viewer can't quickly figure out what your site is about, they will just as quickly leave. On a similar subject, generally, Flash introductions should be avoided on business sites. If the customer is trapped into watching a "movie" about your company before they can gain access to the information that they came for, chances are good that they won't wait.

• What are your customers' problems?

People don't buy products, they buy benefits. Describe your products or services in terms of the benefits that they offer to the customer, or of being the solution to the customer's problem. Customers want the W.I.I.F.M. (what's in it for me?)

• What is your competitive advantage?

What makes your product or service different from your competitors? Customers want to be reassured that they are making a wise decision in dealing with you.

• What do your customers need to know before making a decision?

Think about what questions people usually ask when they contact your company through other means. What do potential customers ask when they telephone for information? What do they ask your salespeople? What is most important to them about your product or service? Ensure that your information is focused on your customers, and on answering these questions. Chances are very good that the first thing your customer wants to know is NOT what your company mission statement is - so don't put this on your home page.

• Who are you?

While it is not generally the first thing people want to know, if you have offered them the solution to their problems and answered their questions, they may want to know about you. (If your product is clearly yourself - e.g. as a keynote speaker, stand up comedian, etc., then who you are should probably get top billing.)

• How can customers contact you?

The ultimate purpose of most business websites is to provide enough information to potential customers in order for them to make a decision to purchase your products or services. If they have gotten this far, and then they can't figure out how to contact you, you will lose the sale. This is important even if you are selling your products or services directly on line - customers may have additional questions, and they also feel more confident in making an on line purchase from a company that appears to have a physical presence. You may include your contact information on every page of your site, or at least ensure that every page of your site has a "Contact Us" button that links to a page including the ways you can be contacted (office address, local and toll free phone numbers, fax number, e-mail address, store or branch locations if applicable.)

A professionally designed website, providing clear, relevant, well organized information is essential to achieving success with your on line strategy.

Golden Point Cafe...

I have collected content for the Golden Point Cafe website and arranged it under each of the headings that was created in the site map in Pre-School - Plan Your Website Design. The following document includes this content:

• Text Content - Golden Point Cafe Text Content
  

Other specialised content that will appear on the website:

• Cafe Menus - Cafe Menu | Take Away Menu
• Artwork/Logos -

• Images -

 

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Now that your content is arranged, the hard (and sometimes most tedious) work is done and you are well on your way to making your own website. Organising your website content can usually take the most amount of time to arrange, so take your time and pay particular attention to getting it in a format that will suit your target audience. Give them what they want and make the main or most popular content easy to find. With this in mind, remember that you are creating a content managed website. Therefore whatever you do now is not set in stone. You are creating a dynamic website which means that every piece of information you enter can be edited if required down the track.