Content is king. Without content your website is an empty shell, a skeleton with no flesh, an empty vessel. Content can redeem the worst designed website. The right content can make your phone ring off the hook and flood your inbox with people wanting your product or service. Content is the most important ingredient in the recipe for your website's success. If you have engrossing, valuable and relevant content you are onto a winner..
Tip 1 - Keep It Customer-Focused - What You Like Is Irrelevant
I land on the homepage. I want to buy a bathroom from this company. I want to know what bathrooms they have available. I want to know how much it will cost, when they can deliver, if they have any special offers and what their previous customers have said about them. Instead, upon landing on the homepage I get the following all-time classic;
"Welcome to ABC Bathrooms. Our company was formed in 1985. Our Managing Director John set up the company at the age of 25 after spending thirty years in the position of.."
Who cares?! I want to know exactly what you sell and how much it will cost me. I have 10 spare minutes today to find this information out and if I don't see it on your site in a few seconds I will click off to your competitors so don't bore me with the life story of your managing director. I do not care. Give me content that I like - not what you THINK I would like. Key difference.
Tip 2 - Sell Benefits, Not Features
Potential customers do not want to know how your product was built, how old the production manager is or what colour the wallpaper is in the production plant - they want to know how buying it will enrich their lives. They want to see evidence for the benefits of owning your product or using your service. People don't buy things - they buy benefits and they buy feelings. People buying a Ferrari are not buying a mode of transport they are buying prestige, luxury, envy, success - they are buying a symbol, a way of life.
Think about your product or service from a customer's point of view - what are the real, measurable and provable benefits to them of buying from you? Include these over and over in your content and it will bring more sales for you. Don't be afraid of blowing your own trumpet - stick the benefits right on the homepage for a start!
Tip 3 - Include Calls To Action - Everywhere!
Excellent - you've written killer content and people are coming back to your website time and again for the information. Your traffic figures are shooting through the roof. It's brilliant! You can't believe you've cracked it. And then you look at the number of orders placed last week - zero. Oh. What happened there? Better to have one person visiting your site each month who actually places an order or produces a sales lead rather than have 1000 people who do neither.
If you don't have clear benefit-focused calls to action peppered throughout your content people will not get in touch with you or place that all-important order. You hook them in with the winning content and then you offer them more information vial email or a free quotation if they phone you - anything! You must have calls to action present throughout your site - combine this with the other two tips and you are on the way to having content that actually makes you sales.
Michael Cheney Sales & Marketing Director, magnet4web.com
About the Author
Michael Cheney is the Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM:
"High five Michael! Your bible is superb! The world needs to read it and learn from it." - Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of "Guerrilla Marketing"
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