Web content: Getting your message right
Corporate websites are increasingly becoming the primary communications channel for many organisations. The best sites deliver the content people want. They are highly targeted and tightly structured. They are easy to update and quick to react. They utilise audio, video and content management. And they communicate clearly, simply and inspirationally.
Yet, many sites demonstrate that companies do not approach their online communications with a clear strategy and vision. For example, 25% of FTSE 100 companies do not say what the company does on their homepage. For a few this may represent a belief that they are sufficiently well known not to need to say, but for most it represents a misunderstanding of the purpose of a homepage, and of web content.
Knowing your audienceThe first and most fundamental part of creating an effective website is to clearly understand who it is for. Identifying the people who will use the site drives every part of creating a successful website – site structure, tone of voice, choice of imagery, use of technology... A UK company that gets 40% of its web traffic from China should be providing the opportunity to read the site in Chinese – or should have a very good reason for not doing so.
If diverse groups of people will be using a site (doctors, patients and investors, for example), it should be easy to find content specific to them (clinical studies, basic health information, annual reports). This can be done through the top-level site structure or by clever and logical linking of content within the site – or, ideally, by both.
A company website should inform, engage and inspire. It should provide insight into the company. It should generate interest in the company. And it should stimulate dialogue and interaction. These goals should determine the creation of all web content – from core corporate messages on a homepage to individual pages further down a site.
Engaging web content is clear, concise and immediate. People don’t expect websites to provide them with a single long read. That doesn’t mean web content should always be short. It means that a website should get people to the content they want quickly and should then deliver it in the most appropriate way – whether that is a video, an interactive diagram or a page of text. If it is text, it must be written for the web – simply putting the text from a printed brochure or report online is guaranteed to drive people away from your site.
People also expect to browse, search and dip in and out of content. A successful and engaging website is one that uses clear and logical navigation to enable journeys through the site, but that also enables people to easily search for exactly what they want. A search facility that doesn’t work properly will make your site memorable for the wrong reasons.
Keeping a website fresh and involving is the key to getting people to come back regularly. Do this and you will create dialogue and build lasting relationships with them. Companies often put a huge effort into building a new site only to let it stagnate and go out of date – think how often you see ‘news’ stories on a homepage that are actually six months old.
Keeping a website communicating as well as it did on the day it launched requires planning and a desire to improve. There needs to be a willingness to create new ideas, refresh existing content and, importantly, to strip away old content – an archive of press releases stretching back five years is rarely necessary.
However, this need not be time-consuming or expensive. Content management systems enable proactive online communications that are easy to maintain on a regular basis: doing a little often can have a great impact on the quality and relevance of a site – and can provide real value for money.
With the emergence of simple yet powerful online tools, it is now possible to get an entire raft of web analytics. These can inform on everything from total site traffic, most frequently viewed pages and most popular downloads through to detailed user behaviour, total time spent on the site and, importantly, how people found your site – Google, Wikipedia, a competitor’s site... And, for global companies, analytics can provide an insight into the geographical spread of site visitors.
These results should all feed into an ongoing website strategy – asking questions of your site and the way it communicates. If 40% of people search for the Annual Review, but the Annual Review is not in the top 20 downloads, is the site working correctly?
