This guest blog was written by Lesley Morrissey, a commercial copywriter who specialises in website content and readability.
Does your website get people interested quickly and keep them long enough to take action? That’s what it should do if it functions properly. Is this to do with traffic, design, SEO or what?
Definitely what!
Actually, it’s a combination of:
- An attractive and appropriate design
- Getting the site found (SEO)
- Lots of people visiting (traffic)
- A powerful message presented well.
Most people spend the money on having their website designed and developed so it’s easy for the visitor to use, some people invest in getting traffic through optimising the site for the search engines, but very few pay attention to the message.
These are the things that will help you to get your message across effectively.
- It needs to say something that appeals to the reader (not the site owner)
- It needs to be presented in a way that makes it easy for the site visitor to see it quickly without distraction, confusion or overwhelm.
- It needs to ask the reader to do something.
That’s it! However, like most things there are many ways of addressing these issues and it’s not a quick fix.
Most people know far more about their business than any audience wants to hear – the secret is finding out what is most important to your target audience and talking about that in terms that appeal to them.
Few people understand that, even with a brilliant message, the presentation can make it almost impossible to read. Readability is a big issue – if people have to work hard to get your message, you can be sure many of them won’t bother – they’ll just go somewhere else.
Finally – that call to action is critical. It doesn’t have to say ‘buy now’. The call to action can:
- Ask them to download a free report (in return for their email address)
- Suggest they look at some more pages
- Ask them to ring you or email you
- Request they follow you on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn
- Ask them to ‘like’ your Facebook page
- Ask them to comment on your blog.
There are many options – but don’t let them leave without asking them to complete the connection in some way.
Get all this right and you’ll have a much harder working website.
Lesley Morrissey is Lesleywriter and can be contacted on www.lesleywriter.com or by phone at 01245 473296.
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