We’ve already discussed things to consider as a general approach to writing good content for your website and have discussed 3 practical pointers. How do you effectively write content for a website? Let’s continue with the 3 foundations for website content – Humanity, Scalability, and Credibility.
How to Write Effective Website Content for Your Business
Humanity
Write less like you would for a brochure and more like how you speak to a friend. Your writing should be genuine, friendly, approachable, reliable, natural and conversational.
Your website should reflect you and your business. What would they expect if someone were to meet you in person after viewing your website?
Scalability
Get your point across quickly. Bring what’s most important to your audience front and centre. Inverted pyramid (general to specific) or try and get your main point in first 25 words. The crucial information must go at the beginning, they could stop reading at anytime.
Make your headings and subheadings meaningful and specific. If they only read the subheadings, will they understand?
Lists are better than paragraphs but keep them to 5-7 items.
If you have a few (up to 5) items, the viewer will read all. If, for example, you had 25 items the reader is likely to read less than 5.
What are the most important points?
Are some of your points saying the same thing?
Make link text helpful because the scanner will jump to it. Keep it short and use action verbs where possible. Keep to plain English, not URL’s (eg. Download Catalogue rather than www.yourdomain.com/about/resources…). That is the beauty of link text – you can hide all the ugly stuff and only show what you want to.