The Graphite Blog

Website content - simple surely?

With so many websites that talk just about themselves with "welcome to our website, we've been in business since 1989..." then listing their services, products, some information about them, contact info and so on you need to be different. You must think about the customer visiting your website.

A customer landing on your website is no different to a customer walking into a shop - the shop keeper never says "hi, welcome to my shop, we've been open since 1989"! They say "hi, how can I help you?". They want to determine the customer's need so they can help them make a choice to purchase. So remember this with your website content as it should be doing the same thing.

Clear Choices and Direction

Once the customer in the shop says "I'm looking for x" the shopkeeper then guides them to the area of the shop where that item is located. So on your website think about how to guide your visitor to easily find the information they need. Some things to consider:

• phone number - some may just want this so put it on every page preferably at the top
• opening times
• map to find you
• try to categorise your services or products filtering them down to the specific customer need - think about a clothing store, they use men, women, children, tops, trousers, shoes allowing the customer to be guided to the right page and information
• a method of contacting you from the website - web form or your email (some people hate using the phone)
• give them all the information so they can make their choice to select you

Give them the information they need

Here is a real life personal example of giving the customer what they need. In looking for office space in Edinburgh, I researched quite a few different websites and I chose The Melting Pot without seeing it. The website gave me all the information I needed to know:

• their location
• the opening times
• the various rental options
• the cost of each option
• what each option provided
• things they do for those who work there (the potters as they are known)
• they even offer a free day to pop in and try it out (I popped in and signed up)

The other websites all required me to fill in a form with my needs and promised to get back to me. Now whilst you may think I am impatient or should not expect to have all the information I needed to rent an office, The Melting Pot was able to provide that. That was a service above and beyond ALL the others - they met my expectations where the rest failed.

And so our office move to be based in Edinburgh was sealed from the website content. Quite powerful.

Another example is when we ran a B&B on the Isle of Skye, from 2006 our website had all the info a potential guest needed, availability, price, room info, arrival/departure times etc.  This meant that 95% of the time, any contact from the website was a booking, no checking of availability, no asking the cost, all info was there and we were complimented on it so many times!

Bottom line is to know what your customer needs and give them the information clearly and simply. To do this with our clients we undertake a session of Business Discovery to identify your ideal customer, who they are, where they are. We assess your competition and then develop your marketing strategy which will include a website build (in almost every case). Think about that when it comes to your website content.