Does your website look great, but customers aren’t picking up the phone to make an enquiry? Your website content is probably the culprit.
Here’s how to understand the difference between “filler” content and high quality content, and why you’ll want to purge the latter from your site.
Web content is rarely neutral. It’s either building value or it’s eroding it.
High-quality content satisfies customers, makes your organisation look great and builds your brand. Low-quality, filler content frustrates customers, wastes their time and erodes brand equity.
Often a business will spend thousands of dollars on their web design and then get a junior staff member to write the content. Amateur content makes your business look amateurish.
Filler content includes content that’s badly written, with grammatical or spelling errors, or is inaccurate and out of date, PDFs that are presented for reading online, press releases (except in a media section) and marketing fluff.
High-quality content is an asset
Well-written web content that anticipates and satisfies customers’ needs is a valuable asset to a business. High-quality content:
- Entices prospects to give you their contact details
- Drives sales and helps qualify prospects
- Increases sales conversions by keeping prospects on the site and giving them all the purchase information they need
- Provides customer service (often reducing costs in the process)
- Differentiates your business from your competitors, and
- Is essential for getting high ranking in search engines and attracting qualified traffic.
Information beats hype
“Sites loaded with informational non-salesy materials such as specs, product photos, research, guides, reviews, etc., were much more likely to convert than overt sales messages.”
Marketing Sherpa, 2004, Must-read Research Results on Search & Online Shopping
Get rid of filler
Filler web content wastes people’s time. It annoys customers and damages your reputation. It diminishes the value of your site. You’d be better off to have never put it on the web.
To create a profitable website you must focus on high-quality content. Less is more. Focus on helping your customers complete their most important tasks with content that’s useful, usable and appealing.
Things to do:
- Commit to creating high-quality content for your website.
- Remove all filler content.
- Base your web content on helping customers complete their most important tasks.
About the author: Charles Cuninghame is an expert website copywriter and marketing trouble shooter who helps business owners and marketing managers attract more clients.
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