4. Content
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Content can come in many forms, but the most used content online plain text. But other content such as videos, podcasts and infographics all use text fundamentally. Content or words are what make up the internet. Using the correct words in throughout and in situations is the difference between a user staying or going, or buying or not.
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Not written by client
In the vast majority of cases, content should not be written by the client. Whilst most of us deal in writing lots of stuff, think email, content and copywriting a specialised skill. People that are writing content for websites most of the time are naturally going to produce copy of much higher quality than someone who hasn't written before for a website. It's a factor of experience. I will stress again that writing copy and content for websites requires a good degree of experience to get it right.
There are different types of writing that need to be considered. Sales pages have a different objective from an industry article. The sales page would look to understand the prospect deeper, focus on objections, and focus on a pain point and problem. The article page would be written in an informal way that is set out to gain readership and inform visitors.
Headlines
With headlines, it said that 80% read the headline and only from that do 20% read the full body of text that follows. Therefore headlines are incredibly important to the success of any writing online. Headlines are also a big part of maximising search engine optimisation. The best way we know to do both effectively is to write 2 headlines. One is there to grab attention, mostly using curiosity and the other for search engines. Then you would try and combine the different headlines into a single headline. This is the technique we use all the time to get the full benefit of writing for search engines and having an intriguing click-worthy headline.
In an ideal world, all the copy would be produced prior to any design taking place. The content is often the most overlooked part of a website. If there is one thing to stress here, it's that the copy and the writing are absolutely critical to the success of any website.
Successful website
You can have an ugly website but it still takes in a lot of revenue and turn into a very successful website. You cannot, however, have a fabulous-looking website that has the wrong words. It just won't work. The words and content are the most important part of any website. Think of it like this, if you had a website that was written in a different language and you didn't understand that language how well do you think that it would do? Having the wrong content is like a foreign language if people cannot understand the writing. People would have no confidence in what they were reading, and they would leave the site immediately that's what people do if you have poor content that doesn't resonate with your audience.