You’ve set up shop, prepared your products or services, and set up your website. You are now poised and ready to answer online inquiries and rack up sales from your website leads. However, something seems to be amiss.
No one seems to be visiting your website. What could be wrong? More importantly, what could you do to make things right?
From ensuring maximum visual appeal to hiring highly skilled freelance content writers, read on and find out how to make your website pop and hook the attention of your target audience.
Table of Contents
Making Your Website Work
It takes 50 milliseconds for consumers to make an opinion on your website. That’s just 0.05 seconds for you to make a good first impression on your target market. What can you do to grab this precious sliver of their time?
Your website is a vital component of your business. A good website can help you with your brand-building efforts as well as aid you in achieving your business goals. Aside from increasing your visibility, it is also a valuable advertising and communication tool that can help attract your intended audience. In addition, it is a powerful sales tool that can contribute to scoring leads and providing you access to prospective customers.
Having a website also helps you to save on costs, such as distribution or printing costs. It is a mobile-friendly format that allows you to expand your reach and open gateways to new markets.
Whether you own a small business in a niche market, run a local restaurant, or operate a boutique cinema, it would do you well to pay close attention to your website. From your logo, typography, graphics, content and other website elements, it only takes a few moments to make a lasting (and ideally, positive) impression on your audience.
Here are some simple tips and tricks to make your website work harder for you:
1. Map Out a Tangible Plan
As with any business manoeuvre, you should have a sound plan for making your website content as hardworking as possible.
Look at your branding and business goals and strategize on how to best create content that will satisfy both. If needed, prioritize one over the other. It would help if you can create a content map or calendar so you can also be guided accordingly based on your specific targets.
For example, you can schedule your content with your tactical goals. Do you need to introduce your company first? Would you like to push a certain product for this month? Do you have any seasonal promotions that you want to highlight? Assess the order of importance of your goals before you write your content.
2. Use Snappy and Catchy Content
The age-old adage of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Short and Simple) should still be taken into consideration when writing content for your website or having content written by experienced copywriters. According to the results of the eye-tracking research conducted by the Missouri University of Science and Technology, readers only spend about 5.59 seconds browsing a website’s content. That gives you less than a minute to catch the attention of your audience.
To hook their attention, you need to use short and snappy phrases, preferably with action words. Verbs help your readers visualize the message better and may lead them to do what your content intended to do in the first place. A call to action at the end of a blog piece or at the bottom of the page can generate favourable results.
3. Mind Your Tone
While you want your words and phrases to be catchy, you still have to be careful about what tone of voice you use. Make sure that it is aligned with your branding strategy to keep a consistent and coherent tone across all your messages.
As much as possible, use a personable tone of voice when creating content. It should be engaging and relatable as if your readers are personally talking or listening to you and not to a machine. A warm and conversational approach is always preferable to a condescending and cold voice.
4. Check and Double-Check
Even if you are confident with your writing, it always helps when you check and double-check your work. Proofread your content several times. Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes can make your brand or business seem negligent. Pay attention to details like punctuation marks, use of idiomatic expressions, cultural sensitivities, or politically correct ways of saying things.
Poorly written content will give the impression that you do not care for the readers or your very own brand. On the flip side, well-written content can plant seeds of trust in your audience’s minds and hearts and may serve as a foundation for brand loyalty.
5. Keep It Updated
You may be busy with all the other aspects of your business, but try to follow your content calendar as closely as possible. You must keep your content updated to continue to be relatable to your readers.
Update your website at least once a year. Weed out outdated content that is no longer relevant or tweak it to make it as timely as possible. Just be careful when tossing out old content as it may affect your website’s SEO. When you want to rewrite your site’s content, run a split-page test to see which language is better in converting users. What you can do is to divide your traffic into two – half is directed to the new content while the other half goes to the old one.
Winning Website Content
For you to have a winning website, you should take the time to evaluate what you have and what you want. With a sound plan in mind, you can execute your content strategy and engage your target audience to achieve your goals. Following the tips mentioned above, you can look forward to a more zippy and zesty website that can hook the attention of your market and reel them in.
References:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449290500330448
