Although all business want the design of their website to look great and grab a users interest, it is the websites usability and copy which will make or break the user experience. Good website copy should be:
To help you work through what can be a daunting task we have put together a few tips below.
The first questions to ask yourself before you even start to write your copy are: "who is reading this?" and "what do they need?" Although you want to be able to sell your services you also want to ensure that your copy is focused on the needs of your user, what information about you or your product would be useful to them? You should provide your users with useful content not just a full force sales pitch.
You also want to save users time. if they can't find what they need they will just leave your website for another. So start with the important information with less vital details included later (either further down the page or deeper within the website).
Often more easily said than done but by keeping copy simple you optiise the usability of your website.
Keep sentences short and to the point, try for less than 30 words per sentence. Keep marketing jargon out at all costs, at best it's confusing and at worst it's irritating. If you start sounding like Siobhan Sharpe from Twenty Twelve you need to start again! Also, try to keep your content basic, you don't need to use complicated vocabulary to get your point across, your copy should beaccessible to all users whether they understand your industry's terminology or not.
So that your website comes up for relevant searches in the search engines your content should contain the keywords that you think users may be searching on to find you. You don't want to go too far with this as it could be seen as 'keyword stuffing' which can negatively affect your page rank. But a good rule of thumb is to use 3 -4 keywords per page or one per paragraph.
For a user to be faced with one long page of content can be quite daunting. Users will often scan as appose to fully read a web page, to find the content they are after. Using headings, subheadings, lists and images to break up content will all help the visitors to your site.
Many business will launch their website or add new content but then fail to track any results. Your website is one avenue of marketing and as such its results should be tracked. Common diagnostics for your website include the volume of traffic, the nu8mber of comments, liks and shares on any articles, pages or products, conversions to enquiries or sales and also the overall sales growth of your business.
