When optimized effectively, a simple website’s homepage can increase your ROI and conversion rate. Even though more and more enterprises are opening their doors for responsive designs that deliver across digital devices, this remains true. Crucial components are getting more lost than ever before even with all the studies and data are pointing out what you’re delivering.
The compelling content has been often missing even in the early times of corporate web design. Nowadays, we aren’t still getting it right even if we know that it is important. Why? For the reason that it is hard but being hard is not impossible. If a bee is always attracted to nectar, we can also make it on our website. By having a great content, our site can always entice visitors to become buyers.
A web design project is always a content strategy one. And with the understanding of its details, here are some of the best content practices to bear in mind while embracing the new innovations of web designs.
An Enticing About Us Page
The first place where visitors go to your website or social media profiles is your landing page. In addition, they will proceed to go to your “About Us” page if they have an interest past your landing page. They are doing this to learn more about your website.
Websites with all kinds of information and details are numerous. If a visitor wants to go on a fact-finding mission, he/she will try to go to the “About Us” section. This is done because he/ she wanted to uncover the “story” of your enterprise. If the content of your website is merely talking about your products and /or services, you are selling it short. Most often than not, visitors are learning a great deal, not just about you or your enterprise.
Different types of information are the interests of the different visitors of your site. At this junction, the most asked basic information that they are looking for is, who you are, how you came to be and where you are now. An excellent way to communicate this information to your visitors is through your “About Us” page. This will give them the confidence that you and your enterprise are the answer to their needs because you possessed the skills and experience needed. An “About Us” page of your website should be able to answer the following questions.
- When did we start?
- Who are we?
- What do we do?
- How do we do it?
Why should you choose us over someone else (WIIFM – What’s In It For Me)?
It is a great idea to include photos of you and your key staff members whenever trying to speak about who you are. You can also include biographical sketches for each of you. The highlight of these sketches should be the work experience and the educational background. That information is a great comfort to your visitors. Visitors who might be on the verge of deciding to avail of the products and services offered or not.
Content Personalization
Creating an engaging content may seem easy as it looks but it’s not. Most marketers are agreeing that content marketing makes up the most crucial piece of an advertising strategy. By this, many are pointing out that in order to create an engaging content it must be personalized and contextually relevant. This should be done in order to truly succeed with consumers.
A group of experts of marketing was asked about their approach, 67% said that they are using the behavior based data. These senior marketing executives from the US and Europe were using this data to develop content based insights and emotions.
Conversely, this does not mean that the producing process of content has gotten a lot easier. In fact, creating a more insight-driven and personalized content has become more and more difficult. The 60% of those same executives were asked about the challenges in facing content creation. They made mention that keeping up with the demand for more content across more channels is the most challenging. On the other hand, 50% are saying that leveraging behavioral and attitudinal data to create emotionally-engaging content is also tough.
Not possessing the technology (59%) and no necessary resources available (59%) were just the two of the inherent challenges of content personalization among marketers. This was the result shown by a survey from Demand Metric in February 2016.The survey aimed to look for reasons why marketers are not personalizing content and this was confirmed by other researchers.
Related: Grow with the Traffic: Ways to Personalize Your Website with Customer Journey
Alt Text & Meta Description
In your website’s HTML, you can insert a word or phrase that tells the viewers (and search engines) the contents of an image. This is the alt text. The image alt text will be shown in case that the image cannot be displayed for any apparent reason. This provides the visitors, an understanding of the image supposedly shown. This will also help you to rank in Google image searches because alt text also provides Google with helpful information about the subject of the image. Making sure that you are entering the accurate alt text and staying away from keyword stuffing is a must. For the reason that this may irritate your user and can cause your site to be marked as spam. Google is your best friend if you look for more alt tags and other images and other image publishing guidelines.
HTML attributes providing concise explanations of the contents of web pages are called Meta descriptions. They are provided on search engine results even if they are not considered as a factor for search engine rankings. They are present as a preview clip for any given page. By compelling a Meta description, you can get searchers to click on your content from search results page. Utilize Meta description by using a unique description on your page. Also, make sure that it is around 155 characters and uses your focus keywords. Bear in mind that having a unique Meta description on your website is very important. Learn more about Meta descriptions in this article from Moz.
Calls-to-Action That Convert
The better known CTA or “call-to-action” is an appeal to users, inviting their response. It is usually a button with a copy in digital marketing. Getting someone to respond to some kind of a call to action is a means of conversion. Often times, a successful CTA which involves a tap on a button or click results in a conversion.
Downloading a PDF, filling out a form, buying a product or even just clicking to another page are just some of the ways to use a CTA to spur the users. In fact, there are literally thousands of different types of calls to action. You can even use it as much as you want to make the user do something or respond in many ways.
As an expert of conversion and marketing, use your best shot and research to guide the creation of the CTA. A designer may lend a hand most like because they have good ideas but don’t fall short. Make sure that the final products do what it ought to do and doesn’t sit there and be a decoration on the wall.
Gain Trust through Social Proof
Oftentimes, people tend to copy what others are doing. Just like the phrase “Everybody’s doing it.” It’s a concept of brain science so you may have heard of it. Experts in psychology refer it as a bandwagon effect, herd behavior or conformity. For marketers, it is referred as a social proof.
Giving evidence that you are accepted by others is its goal to increase conversions. Buyers, subscribers, influencers and visitors all trust you. The referred kind of “informational social influence” is just simple. However, this simple influence is also a powerful way in improving your initial judgment of your landing pages, your site and mostly your enterprise.
Testimonials and reviews are also considered as a great supportive content just like any type of social proof. Basically, you can add one proof each page aligning the social proof with the product or service, on your website. This is a great way of placing them on your site.
Ahead of these testimonials are the celebrity and expert endorsement. Add it to your home page if ever your enterprise has been complimented by a well-known person or someone respected. The more influential and the more relevant the endorser is the better social proof.
Adding these in your blog to gather shares likes or tweets for every post is easy. The more shares, the better and this clearly showed a vote of confidence for that content.
Trying this at home with a few or no social shares on a typical post is discouraged. Social proof is a double edged-sword. It goes both ways. Does this help your enterprise? Well, it’s better to have no proof at all than a low proof.
