Have you ever went to a website and closed it after 10 seconds? Sometimes it’s because the website clearly doesn’t have what you were looking for. Other times, you start reading the text and it sounds alien, non-informative or you get attacked with random ads and pop-ups. So you walk away because you don’t have the time to sort through all this mess.
The content on that site was not designed for easy consumption by people.
Now, how long has it been since you actually read through every page of your own website? Are you sure it’s human friendly? Because if it isn’t, people will run from it like it was the plague. There are many reasons why your website may have lost the human touch. But don’t worry, the damage can be repaired with a few strategic modifications.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Don’t get us wrong, keywords for SEO are still important and still work. But having a page full of keywords is not the way to the customer’s heart. Keywords get you found, but once a visitor lands on your website, the text on the page has to provide the information they were looking for. If all they see is the same phrase repeated over and over, they will go to your competitor’s site that actually answers their questions.
Provide Information Your Customers Want
So, if you shouldn’t repeat keywords so frequently, what should you say about your business? Let’s say you own a dog grooming business. Start by thinking what your average customer would need to know before scheduling an appointment. As a business owner, you should know this because customers call or email you with questions all the time. Why wait for their email if you could answer their questions right there on the website?
Going back to the dog groomer example, an average customer may want to know which services you offer. Do you bathe and cut hair and nails? Do you brush and blow dry? Do you do fashion cuts or just the basic trim? Do you work with all breeds? Can you help with hair mats? How long does it take? Where can I see pictures? This list goes on and on—you get the idea.
Provide the Right Amount of Information
Business owners often fall into two categories: those who think everything about their business is important and should be on the website and those who like to keep it down to a few sentences. Either approach is an extreme and the best solution for a website is to find the middle ground. There has to be enough information to tell your story but not so much that it overwhelms the user.
Assume that your average customer will initially scan through the content instead of reading every word. Large blocks of text are hard to scan, so break them up with pictures or other design elements. Some users may want more in-depth information about your business or services—you can create separate pages, videos, a guide or other type of content to meet their needs. There is no golden rule for the “right” amount of information; you should follow your intuition, test and take advice from your marketing firm.
Don’t Waste People’s Time
You may have heard about HTTP, but what about GTTP? It stands for “get to the point” and I feel like many website could use this advice when it comes to content. Tell your business story on the “About us” page and save the bragging about your success for the case studies section. If it’s a page about your service, get to the point fast and tell what you offer and why people should buy from you and not the guy down the street.
People appreciate brevity, especially when they need a fast solution. When you are looking for a restaurant in the area, you don’t need to know that the Chef did 10 years of culinary studies in Sydney. Similarly, when your pipe has frozen and burst, you don’t care which brand of tools the plumber uses, as long as the job is done right.
Make Sure it Looks Good on Mobile
You’ve probably been frustrated with a mobile website before. Buttons are too small, you are accidentally clicking on the wrong links, and then the page loads so slow, the text you are trying to read keeps jumping up and down. This is about as non-human friendly as it can get. How fast your content loads and how easy it is to consume on a mobile device matters.
We see with many of our clients that mobile traffic keeps growing year after year. It’s becoming increasingly important to have a mobile-friendly website if you want to save your potential clients from frustrating web experiences. And it’s often faster and easier for a person to press a back button and find another company than pinch, zoom and wait on your site.
Do you need help implementing all of these best practices? At Advantage Internet Marketing, we can help you develop unique and value-packed content for your website no matter what industry you are in!