Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

Web-Content Conundrum
By Jerry Bader (c) 2008

The Web consumes content like a teenager at an all-you-can-eat
buffet. Lots and lots of content makes you more search engine
friendly, helps establish your knowledge and expertise, explains
in detail what you offer, and justifies that offer with all the
explanations, statistics, and rationale you can muster. The
problem is nobody reads it.

Well that's not exactly true: some people read every scrap of
information on your site; they just happen to be the
tire-kickers, the people looking for ways to get stuff they
don't have to pay for, or they're competitors looking for ways
to copy what you do, or worse find something wrong. This is
definitely a dilemma that needs to be addressed.

The Answer Lies In The Questions

The answer is obviously not to eliminate all the good stuff
you've worked so hard to create, or to bury it where nobody
will ever see it. When it comes to Web-content ask yourself:

1. Is our content meaningful and relevant, or is it just hype
and bunkum?

2. Is our content understandable by our audience, or is it so
inarticulate that people just give up, even when they are
desperate to find out what you have to say?

3. Does our content hold our audience's attention? Does it just
explain, or does it engage, excite, and entertain while at the
same time persuade on both a rationale and emotional level?

4. Is our content so intimidating and technical that it leads to
more confusion and questions than answers?

5. Is our most important content buried in volumes of extraneous
information or advertising copy, making it difficult to access
and understand?

If any of these questions describe the text-based information on
your website, then perhaps you need to find a way to make that
important information more useful to your clients, not just
search engines spiders.

When it comes to website content there are five things you need
to keep in mind in order to make that content meaningful:
Relevance, Clarity, Effectiveness, Memorability, and
Personality.

Relevance: The Appropriateness of The Material

The material on your website has to be relevant, it is good for
search engine indexing and it is good for establishing your
expertise and trustworthiness, a quality that is an absolute
necessity in a Web-based business environment, but exactly what
constitutes relevant content?

In order for content to be relevant it must serve your overall
marketing agenda and at the same time it must be useful to your
target audience.

If your goal is to generate long-term clients by establishing a
relationship with your website visitors then that relationship
has to be symbiotic, that is, it must benefit both you and the
your prospective clients. There are far too many websites around
that are based on the P.T. Barnum principle that everyone is a
sucker and can be conned. At the other end of the spectrum there
are also way too many sites that are nothing more than catalogs,
a kind of, here it is, take it or leave it approach. Then there
are the sites that offer pages and pages of specifications and
features that confuse more than clarify. And finally there are
the websites that are nothing more than business cards or
display ads, an approach that says to the visitor that you are
too cheap, too lazy, or too unimaginative to bother creating an
appropriate marketing website.

The fact that search engines seek out relevant content is merely
a positive by-product of good content, it is not the ultimate
marketing objective, which should be to open up a communication
with your audience and start a productive and profitable
relationship.

Clarity: The Ability To Be Understood

Is there anything more important than being understood? I assume
you have a website because you want to promote and expand your
business, but if visitors do not understand who you are, what
you do, and why they should pay you to provide them with a
product or service, then exactly what are you doing?

Being understood sounds like a simple thing, but it is not. Ask
yourself, to whom am I trying to communicate? Is it a search
engine robot or a real person? If your main concern is the ever
changing search engine indexing machinery then you risk the
danger of not being completely understood by the people who
visit your website.

There is a certain comfort in dealing with the illusion of
certainty that speaks to the mechanics of search engine
optimization: all you have to do is follow the rules and you'll
be successful. The problem is the game is fixed and the rules
keep changing, and more importantly it's the wrong audience.
Any order you ever generated was from a real person and if real
people don't understand your marketing message, then all that
traffic to your site is wasted.

Effectiveness: The Ability to Serve Your Marketing Objectives

Being clear and to the point is important but it doesn't
necessarily make your site effective. Dragnet's Sergeant Friday
may have wanted, 'just the facts, nothing but the facts' but
in the real world people need more.

People are busy and they do not want to waste their time on
things that have no meaning for them, and that is the key.
Things become meaningful when they engage while they enlighten,
educate while they entertain, and persuade while they present.
People spend hours upon hours on the Web doing things that could
be considered a waste of time and non productive, so the idea
that people will not invest their time on your website is just
plain wrong. If they won't spend the time, then they aren't
really interested or your presentation stinks.

What makes the Web such a powerful marketing tool is its
multimedia capability, the opportunity to communicate using
text, images, motion graphics, video, and sound (audio) design.
And of all these delivery options the two most effective
communication techniques are video and sound (audio) design.

Memorability: The Ability To Stick In Your Audience's Minds

Clarity and effectiveness are vital but if people don't
remember who you are, all your hard work will be lost. Maybe
you've convinced your audience that your way is the answer, but
if they don't remember it was you that told them, then you've
wasted the opportunity.

There are lots of sites around that expect instant response.
They present their material and expect you to press a button and
give them money. It's not that this can't happen, but it
certainly is not what usually happens.

How many times have you wished you could remember that website
that had that thing that you didn't need then but you need now?
Not every potential customer is ready to buy right away, and if
they forget who you are, someone else will benefit from your
effort.

Let's put it another way, sales is like sex, while marketing is
like a seduction. If you're not prepared to invest in romancing
your audience, they'll immediately forget you exist and the
sale will go to the business that gets remembered.

In order to create that memory, your website has to be an
experience, an experience that resonates and entertains by
delivering your marketing message with style and flair, using
real human beings, analogy, and the classic story format in a
professionally executed performance.

Personality: The Ability To Distinguish You From The Competition

Every business has a personality, an image, an identity that is
the sum total of every experience anyone who has ever had
contact with your company has ever had. Success online and
offline depends on how well you manage that personality.

Your website is part of your public face and in many cases it is
your only public face. Your business is not what you sell and it
is not you, it is a separate and distinct entity that needs to
be treated like a precocious child in need of care and feeding,
and development.

Personality starts with a point-of-view and an attitude strong
enough to make an impact. And the more mundane your offering,
the more important it is to make a statement. Victoria's Secret
has little trouble grabbing people's attention, but if it's
sandpaper you sell, you better try harder. We especially see
this identity crisis with distributors, whose own personality
often gets sublimated to the major brands they carry.

Perhaps you remember the J. Peterman character from the old
Seinfeld television show. The character was played by, actor and
voice-over specialist, John O'Hurley, who is nothing like the
real J. Peterman. But the characterization was so strong, and so
memorable, that O'Hurley was able to single-handedly rescue the
company from financial trouble.

If you're looking to create a Web-personality as effective as
John O'Hurley's J. Peterman, you should consider adding a
video or audio host to your Web-presentation, one that engages
your audience's attention and captures their collective
imagination.

A Final Thought

At the end of the day there is one thing about websites that
should guide you in your decisions as to what you present and
how, and that is simply, websites are for people not search
engines. If the people coming to your website don't hear what
you have to say, understand what you're offering, and remember
who you are, then your website isn't doing what it needs to do
for your business.
================================================================
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
================================================================

Copyright © 2008 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.