Good Content Pays!

Traffic to a site can be a blessing or a curse. Visitors who find what they are looking for, are engaged in what the site offers, and/or come away with a positive impression become the site owner?s best allies and customers. But lead a visitor to believe that they will find what they are looking for and then not provide on your promise and you will find yourself being stabbed in the back repeatedly by people you will never know. As discussed in another article, ?What Are the Benefits of Good Design on the Web?? the task of the site owner is not simply to ask all the right questions and make sure the designer interprets the answers correctly. Just as challenging is the need for the correct content?content that is largely dictated by the answers to the same questions so important to good design: Who are the visitors? What are they looking for? What is their situation, are they rushed? Are they knowledgeable? Are they looking for opinions or facts? Are they the kind of prospect the site owner is looking for?

Much is made of the importance of ?fresh? content, but I posit that the right content is ageless if it?s still relevant to the audience it?s targeted toward and the business objectives continue to be met. A constant infusion of ill-aimed content on top of bad or incorrect content is no answer to the challenge of gaining and keeping customers. So the question is, ?What?s the right content?? As Michael Gerber states in his must-read book, E-Myth Revisited, ?It is in the understanding of value, as it impacts every person with whom your business comes into contact, that every extraordinary business lives.? Deep knowledge of your customers will define your entire business and make clear the boundaries of your content.

Content development is often a missed opportunity for creativity. Here a team can and should gather to read and digest what the psychographics profiles indicate the interests and motivators of the audiences are. As a hedge against myopia, your team should include one or more from outside your company or immediate colleagues. The same scenarios that influence the designers should be the frameworks for role-playing within the content team.

No matter the intent of the site ? whether e-commerce, private intranet, public promotion, nonprofit research, or secure account management ? the measurement of success, the determinant of how much the site is returning on the owner?s investment, is found in the server logs. They tell the story of the visitor?s travels through the site. If the content is good, visitors will linger when they find content that resonates with who they are and their situation. If they stay less than a minute, going to another site from the first page they land on, you are looking at either a visitor who realized they were not looking for what you were offering, or a visitor who was turned off by the content they perused in those first 30 seconds. Good content engages; good content pays!

Stephen Dill
SRD InterActive
srd@srdinteractive.com
www.srdinteractive.com

Stephen Dill is a seasoned marketer with expertise in the development and use of interactive channels and their integration with traditional marketing channels. Stephen has held leadership and/or consulting positions in small companies, Fortune 500 companies and the military. He has extensive experience in conceptualizing and articulating new concepts, organizing teams and managing projects through to completion.

More Web Design Articles

Are Web Templates Worth It?
First off, I am a designer. Now you're thinking, here's this guy trying to convince me to hire a designer costing a few hundred to a few thousand dollars instead of buying a pre-made web template for about $60.

Increase Your Credibility With Web Site Awards
Web Site Awards are given from other sites to reward your site for a specific reason. They will usually give you an award graphic or text link to include on your site if you win.

How To Attract People To Your Web Site and Leave Their Contact
If you have a website, you want your visitors to stay longer on your website and get more sales. Here are 10 ways you can do to improve it.

Nine Effective Tips For Improving Your Website?s Usability
Web usability is perhaps the most important factor in any web design. This is the driving factor that keeps your visitors coming back to your website.

Love at First Site: Giving Your Website Visitors the right Impression
Think of the people who visit your site as blind dates. When you open the door, your blind date usually knows whether they are attracted to you within the first minute.

Other Ways to Look at Things
Many people today are tired of the Microsoft software that came pre-packaged with their operating system. Some have switched over to Apple's Macintosh line, but for the most part we just put up with what we have.

Dont Make Your Website User-UNfriendly!
Web Design is a very subjective process. Your idea of what looks good may differ from the next person's.

When Good Computers Go Bad
Remember the day that you got your new computer (or the hand-me down from Uncle Larry) and you pulled that shiny case out of the box? Once you finally had all of the cables properly mangled into an unmanageable ball, you powered on, the screen lit up and off you went. The PC was fast, programs loaded in the blink of an eye, and Internet surfing was a breeze.

Moving Things Around
How often, men, have you come home to find the living room furniture in different places? Your wife said she was ready for something different, so she moved some things around. It may have been inconvenient at first, but deep inside it felt good to have things a little different at home.

So Much About META Tags!
I've written about META tags in the past, and I thought I'd help you expand your search engine optimization efforts and increase your web hits.Rule #1: META tags always go in between the HEAD tags on your website.