Is your website traffic flat lining or non-existent? Are your website stats showing that visitors don’t stay on your site for long, or that you don’t get any repeat visitors?
The chances are that your content is failing to connect with your customers. And while there can be any number of reasons why visitors to your website may not be turning into paying customers, dead, dull or boring content is guaranteed to kill of any spark of interest. Fast.
Here are three tried and tested ways to keep your content lively, and avoid boring your customers to the point of driving them to other websites:
1) Make eye contact with your content
Make your content all about your customers.
Draw your customers in, by talking to them about their needs and how you can deliver those needs. If you don’t know what those needs are, find out by asking – and make a point of reading or listening carefully to the feedback you receive. Remember, your website is not the place to wax lyrical about you and you alone.
By all means share who you are and what you do – and be human, but don’t become the equivalent of the dinner party bore who everyone avoids because she talks non-stop about herself, her achievements, her success, her failures – and nothing else.
2) Create content charisma
If you’ve got a way with words, flaunt it.
Write engaging copy that grabs your audience and holds its attention. Be attentive, be interesting, add variety and your visitors will stay on your website longer and come back to visit time after time.
Use the active voice rather than the passive voice – for example ‘call us now for an instant quote’- instead of ‘the company may be contacted for an instant quote’.
One way to gauge your content charisma ‘rating’ is to check your website stats. These stats will reveal all sorts of eye-opening information including: where visitors go on your website and the keywords that have brought them there.
Your next step is to use this information to improve on what you have – or hire a wordsmith to pull it all together for you.
3) Deliver fluff-free content
By fluff I mean anything that doesn’t improve your content.
If it doesn’t add anything, don’t add it.
Here are some examples: long, complicated words, out-of-place jargon, and long boring sentences.
Fluff-free content includes content that does the job without any unwanted extras.
Avoid extra padding or pointless repetition. Make a point of looking over your content regularly and tweaking it so make sure it is working in every way possible for your customers.
This extra work will pay off in the long run.
Post written by DEBBIE THOMAS on 15 July 2011.