User experience (UX) is imperative for keeping your website visitors on your website. A bad experience of any kind, whether desktop or mobile, is a turn-off to potential customers. However, even if you successfully provide your users with a stellar experience that includes a website that loads fast with landing pages that are designed to impress, your content has to be up to par, too. When you place as much focus on the quality of website content as you do UX, you increase the likelihood that your visitors will remain on your site for a longer duration of time instead of bouncing elsewhere. Write content your visitors love and watch them stick around. Try these seven recommendations.
Be clear.
It’s one of the most basic rules of journalism: address the who, what, where, when, and how. While you may not be a reporter, your customers want “just the facts, ma’am.” Throughout your website content, your visitors need to be able to identify:
- Who you are – Display your brand name and logo prominently. In your blog posts, reintroduce yourself. Very often in our articles, you’ll see us write something along the lines of, “Here at WebDevStudios (WDS), we like to…” This allows us to remind our readers of our brand name, brand initials, and even personalize our messaging because we write in first-person.
- What you do – A tagline or brief blurb that describes your product and/or services should be front-and-center on your Home page. Aside from that, mention your expertise throughout your page content and blog posts. Whether it’s our Services page, Portfolio, or throughout our blog posts, we consistently refer to ourselves as a “WordPress website design and development agency.” After all, we do WordPress.
- Where you are – There are a myriad of ways to tackle this task. An obvious “Contact Us” button that takes the user to a contact form will make them feel as though they have found you. Having an “About Us” link in your header menu will also work. Many websites solve the issue of “where” by simply stating their city, state, and/or country in the footer of every page.
- When they can access your product/service – A “Purchase Now” button or live chat option will indicate immediate access, while displaying business hours sets expectations. An easy contact form lets the user know you will get back to them later.
- How you can solve their problems – Client testimonials are a great way to answer “how.”
Be concise.
People nowadays don’t read for long periods of time. They scan. Be transparent. Tell your story, but do it quickly.
Be informative.
Your visitors came to you for answers. Share them. Think about the questions your potential customers wouldn’t know to ask. Address them. Empower your visitors to make an educated decision before they make a purchase or click the “Contact Us” button. Yes, be concise, but also informative. Doing so will build trust.
Be accurate.
Check your facts, please. The easiest way to lose a potential customer is to provide fake news. Break trust with your website visitors and don’t ever expect them to come back to your website.
Be influential.
Know the trends before your customers do. Report them on your blog. Be timely. Stay up to date with what’s new and what’s happening now. Then share that information. Your users will see you and your business as cutting-edge. They’ll be influenced to do business with you more often.
Be intelligent.
Write well. Just knowing basic grammar and punctuation rules will probably place you ahead of your competitors. Respect the language in which you write and be mindful. Don’t confuse writing correctly with being formal. It’s good to have a casual tone with your readers and website visitors because it creates a sense of being approachable. However, typos, slang, swear words, and text messaging abbreviations come off as sloppy and unprofessional. Err on the side of good presentation.
Be engaging.
Invite your website visitors to take action. Ask them to follow you on social media or leave a comment on a blog post. You could even create polls or place a call for guest bloggers who are also customers. A fun photo contest or giveaways provide opportunities for engagement. When you engage with your website visitors, you build a community around your business, and that builds loyal customers. Who doesn’t want that?
We hear it often, “But I’m not a writer.” You don’t have to be one in order to write content your visitors love. As the business owner, marketing director, or whatever title you hold at your website, you are the expert of your business, your site visitors, and even your industry. Talk to your audience as you would if you were on the sales floor of a brick-and-mortar. Follow our tips. Soon, you will find your visitors not only remaining on your website longer than usual but also returning for more.