But what can you expect from your website? How do you decide its functionality, appearance, number of pages, and level of interactivity? What should the text say? How much text do you need? Here's an introduction to website text and its function.
There are three basic types of websites.
The Business Card
Effective for professionals and upscale service providers including attorneys, financial planners, dentists, and home construction companies, a business card website is typically no more than five or six pages: home page, services, about us, contact us, and case studies or testimonials. The site is designed to accomplish three goals:
1. To validate the visitor's choice of you and your company.
2. To educate the consumer in a very general way.
3. To provide a means to contact you.
Business card websites should have enough search-engine-optimized (SEO) text including keywords so that when a prospect performs a search, your website appears. For example, if you are a divorce lawyer in Spokane, Washington, your text needs to contain these keywords.
A business card website need not be expensive and the content need not change very often. Because you want your clients to read the text, the quality of the writing must be flawless. Each page will contain from 200 to 500 words, and each sentence must be polished to perfection.
To create fresh content, you may consider including a blog on your website. The website is considered a marketing expense because you are not using it to directly generate revenues. It establishes your brand in the marketplace.
The call to action is an invitation to the visitor to contact you for more information.
E-Commerce Website
Designed to make sales, e-commerce websites (like Amazon.com) offer products or services for sale. The website is designed to generate revenue and encourage visitors to make a transaction. There must be a high level of interactivity and security.
In marketing, there are three degrees of sales pitch: soft, medium, and hard. A soft sell encourages the visitor to make contact and to enter into the sales process (most business card websites are soft-sell). The medium sell makes it easy to complete the transaction on the spot: all the information is there, the checkout process is easy, and there is no reason why the customer should wait to make the purchase. The hard sell uses highly focused sales techniques to funnel the visitor to a sale; often there is the implication that if the customer waits, the opportunity will be lost.
E-commerce websites can be either a few pages or vast in scope with hundreds of pages. But the functional text is often kept very simple because you do not want the visitor to get bogged down by reading long descriptive paragraphs. The content may change frequently. Search engine optimization is important, depending upon the level of visibility of your company. Smaller websites (four or five pages) that sell a product or service must feature concise text that supports the sales process-no extraneous verbiage that will distract the reader.
The call to action is an invitation to the visitor to make a purchase, right now.
The Stand-Alone Website
In some cases, such as Google and Facebook, the website itself generates all of the company's revenues. There is no other "product." The stand-alone website creates income by charging for advertising, affiliates, links, and other Internet-related services. The only way for the site to grow and profit is to attract huge numbers of visitors. Search engine ranking is critical to success. These sites must be deep and must contain large amounts of text.
There is no call to action, except to stay longer on the website and view more pages, or to subscribe to the website.
Website Text
Many large websites have a two-tiered approach to text. The "public" pages that represent the site and are seen by every visitor, such as the home or landing page, the about us pages, and FAQ pages, must be written perfectly. One typographical error or poorly written phrase can create the impression that the site is unprofessional or, even worse, is a scam. (Ever notice how the dangerous phishing emails, like those that claim to be from your bank or Internet provider, always have bad English?)
But good writing is not cheap. To populate the back pages of websites with search engine fodder, business owners are often tempted to purchase bulk articles. As long as the keywords are right and the writing is good enough to satisfy the search engine spiders, the bulk articles may serve their purpose. But there are big dangers to this strategy. First, bulk articles are often copied from other articles and "spun," or changed slightly, to appear original. If you purchase these spun articles, chances are you are loading up your website with content that is nearly identical to content on dozens of other websites. The search engine value of the text is severely compromised because your page rank has been diluted. You can check on the originality of any text by using an online service such as Copyscape.
Second, you run the risk that a visitor will actually read your content. Substandard text makes you look unprofessional and indistinguishable from hundreds of other similar sites. It is much better if all the text on your website is of the highest quality, is SEO, and is original.
Your website may be read by hundreds or thousands of potential customers. It is always a good idea to invest in quality writing that will enhance your reputation and brand, and give your customers confidence in you.
Thomas Hauck Communications Services provides writing and editing solutions for businesses and nonprofits. Visit us at http://www.thomashauck.net/ for information on how THCS can impact your bottom line.
