Your company’s website is one of your strongest marketing tools. Now, more than ever, it is important to not turn potential clients off by having convoluted, confusing content and styles, with key information that is lost in a myriad of words.
When developing content for your company website, always keep in mind that people, no matter their education level, tend to read no higher than a grade eight level. So, while you must have strong content, there are “brain tricks” behind the content that will help quickly capture your audience’s attention and on their online reading level.
From the type of font you chose, to where you are placing key information on a page, all tie together with the quality content itself to engage how the human brain reads on a computer screen. This means that in addition to strong content, you must think about how the content looks.
Three Often Overlooked Elements To Strengthen Your Website Content
1) Style and Font
Reading content online is so different from reading content in a brochure. While there seems to be never-ending choices for the type of font you have for your content, keep your font looking as simple as possible. Tahoma, Times New Roman, Arial – these are some of the top fonts for you to use as they are some of the easiest for the reader to visually understand.
Headings should be at a 14+ point font size, while the body paragraph size should be no smaller than 11 point.
From a colour perspective, make sure your font colour really stands out from the background colour. For instance, if you have a dark grey background colour, using a light grey for your font colour will not make your words jump out at the reader. However, if you have a dark coloured background, using white as your font colour works well because of the contrast between the two colours.
With the proper size, style, and colour of font, your readers will be able to quickly skim your content, grasping on to key words and the main topic of the page.
2) Too Much Information, Not Enough Focus
We are all guilty of this as we just want to share as much information as possible, leaving the reader well informed. However, by trying to explain every aspect of your product or service on a page leaves the page convoluted, without any true purpose, which is usually to get your reader to act (i.e. call your company).
Each page on your website should have a specific purpose. As I work mainly with companies selling a product or service, each of their pages should be inspiring action within the reader – most typically to call or contact the company in some way (i.e. phone, email, submit form, etc.). If writing everything about a specific product or service, the negative affect will be that you draw the content away from the specific purpose and focus of the page, leaving the reader confused with what they are supposed to do. If they become confused, they will most likely leave the website altogether and go to a site that quickly tells them the info, and action, they need to receive the solution they want.
3) No Call to Action
One of the worst things a company’s website can do is not have an obvious call to action. In other words, the reader has no clue what they are supposed to do next, or who to even contact to find out what they are to do.
While it is a good idea to have your company’s contact info on each page – either in the header or footer, or both – it is also a good idea to actually TELL the reader what they are to do next within the body of the webpage’s content.
If your purpose of the page is to have your reader opt-in to your monthly newsletter, say so and make it clear where they are to do this. If you require your reader to phone your company for more information and details, SAY so and give them the phone number.
Make it as easy as possible for your readers to know what they are to do, and how they are to do it.
The main thing to remember is that your audience needs to be captured within the first three seconds of landing on your site and know what they are supposed to do. Let your website, and your company, flourish by adding the above, easy to follow points to your website copy!