critical part of your brands identity
Your website is a critical part of your brands identity. It’s often one of the methods a potential clients and/or customers find you, and the quality of the site they come across will determine whether they decide to contact or engage with you.
If there is a potential customer click a link to your site and are greeted by a poorly designed, difficult to navigate or outdated information written in a dull tone, they are unlikely to take your business seriously, never mind convert into a customer. Even if you have lots of content, the way it’s presented will still make or break your conversion rate.
What is Web Content?
In web design, ‘content’ refers to the words, visuals, and audio contained within your site. This is how you convey what you do to visitors, and their experience depends on its quality.
Let’s start with the words.
Your written content (or ‘copy’) is the lifeblood of your website. Images, videos, and logos may look fantastic, but unless they’re backed up with relevant copy, they won’t help you sell your business.
Written content is split into two main categories. Page content is, as the name suggests, the words on each page. This can be explaining one of your services or products or telling the story of your company and the people behind it. The other type is blog content, which is where you’ll provide the latest updates about your industry, as well as a more in-depth look at how your business benefits others.
This content will contain keywords and key phrases, which will bring more people to your site via search engines like Google. Even if you aren’t investing in SEO, simply writing about the relevant topics will improve your ranking. And the more content you have, the more keywords you’ll include.
Visual Web Content
The visuals you choose should complement the copy; they’re like the sauce that turns plain pasta into a delicious meal. Nobody likes to be greeted with a wall of text when they load into a website, especially on mobile devices.
Often images and videos do more to sell a product than any amount of content. If you sell a product, make clear pictures of it front and centre, with the relevant written information close by. Videos of it in action are also great for boosting sales – especially if you invest in quality video production!
The best web content is a delicate balance of copy and visuals (with audio if its relevant to what you do), but this varies from business to business.
An experienced marketing company like ours will help you establish goals for your website, and help you build and implement the best content to help you grow. This is a major part of your content marketing strategy.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a type of marketing strategy you incorporate on and off your website. This can include:
- Adding/improving page content
- Producing regular blogs
- Sending out press releases
- Social media posts
- Emails & correspondence
That’s a lot of words, and a content marketing strategy will take a lot of time if you try to do it yourself. Producing regular content on top of running your business will drain all available hours, which is why most businesses turn to a marketing company or hire a copywriter for their content marketing.
If you choose the former, or work with an SEO provider, the content you produce will be carefully crafted to bring in as much traffic as possible. It’ll also be well written, in a style that matches your brand.
How does Web Design affect Content Marketing?
So how does the design of your website benefit your content marketing?
As we mentioned, your content should be complemented by your web design, and vice versa. If you are a photographer, your website will be packed with galleries of your best work. In this case content shouldn’t be intrusive, only smaller paragraphs surrounding the images, so that they are the main focus.
If you’re receiving content from a third party, choosing how to incorporate it into your site can be tricky. Thankfully a skilled web design company like ours knows the value of content, and how to make it look its best on your site.
What is Accessibility in Web Design?
When you create content, there are 3 main factors to consider:
- SEO
- Accessibility
- Readability
We’ve already talked a little about SEO, so let’s move on to the most important of the three: accessibility.
When someone visits your website, you want to make sure that, at the very least, they’re able to understand the content on each page. Even with advanced screen readers, page filters, and other accessibility tools, there are things you should do to avoid alienating any of your valued visitors.
Web design is key to making your website accessible. The layout of your content and images can be screen-reader friendly, or well structured so that it’s easy for everyone to read. Nobody likes to read tiny text or have to pinch and zoom on their phone to see everything, and any lengths you go to will be appreciated by the people who need it most.
The same is true for images. ALT text will be read aloud, so that even someone with impaired eyesight can enjoy your bold pictures, logos, and more.
When you’re creating your content marketing strategy, accessibility should always be a priority if you want to achieve the widest outreach. There will always be people interested in your business that have accessibility needs regardless of your target demographics, and it’s something your competitors may be lacking.
What is Readability in Web Design?
Some people assume that readability and accessibility are the same thing when it comes to content. They have similar goals but reach them in slightly different ways.
Accessibility is more focused on the structure of the content, such as how it is laid out, the font used, and whether it is backed up with relevant images.
Readability involves improving the content itself so that it ‘reads’ better. It should be in a tone that’s friendly yet professional, so that it flows nicely, and uses language that most people will understand (which is also key for accessibility!).
Improving the structure of your website will make text easier to read. When large paragraphs are neatly broken up, the page can be skimmed through by any visitors.
Finally, if your content is packed with SEO keywords, it won’t read as well as it should– make sure you and your web designer always balance optimization with readability.
Why is the Appearance of your Website Important for Marketing?
You can have the best content on the internet on your pages, but if the web design is unprofessional, you won’t generate as many sales.
Looking good is vital for your brand, no matter what your business provides. You can keep it simple, with only a few images to break up the content, or push the boat out and turn each page into a visual spectacle – often better for creative businesses!
However, if you pack your pages with too many high-definition images, videos, and pop-ups, you’ll slow each page down. And nothing will put off visitors more than waiting for each page to load whenever they click.
We’re big fans of something called ‘responsive design’, which enables you to add media to your heart’s content, without sacrificing efficiency.
What is Responsive Design?
In simple terms, responsive design is a form of web optimization that makes every page look good, no matter what device is being used to read it.
For example, your website might look fantastic on a browser, but the content and images are squashed or stretched on a small phone screen. With responsive design, the CSS is adapted to each medium and the images and videos are resized and condensed to suit all screens.
This is a facet of web design often overlooked, especially if you’re more content focused. But if you’ve spent a lot of time and money on a quality content marketing strategy, you should make sure your content can be enjoyed by anyone, in any way.