Posts Tagged ‘website’
How to Freshen Your Web Site Content
July 23rd, 2010
Many businesses are moving their web sites toward CMS platforms so they can quickly serve up fresh content on a regular basis. This is a great way to keep visitors and search engine spiders coming back. But it’s not a solution to ineffective copy, especially on static pages of your site. And even CMS sites have static pages – About, Services, Contact, etc. – with content that can quickly get stale or simply stop functioning when they should be getting site visitors to act.
Perhaps you just threw those core pages together, your stats show the pages aren’t converting well, or you’re just long overdue for a revamp. The good news is that freshening up your web copy doesn’t have to take long to do and can have a noticeable impact. Here are a few updates to consider.
Update Your Bio
If you’ve recently won an award, presented at a conference or completed a training program, you should work it into your bio. But you don’t need a major change in your credentials to revisit the copy here. Does the page quickly sum up the highlights of your background and experience, show a little of your personality and make it easy for visitors to “get you?” If not, reworking this page is a great idea.
Add a Social Element
If you have a LinkedIn account, Facebook fan page, Twitter account or blog that you use for business, your site should have easily identifiable links or icons found throughout your site. If you tweet primarily business-oriented content, you may even want to incorporate your Twitter feed right into your site.
Change Up Formatting
It’s amazing what a visual facelift can do for your copy’s readability and interest factor. If you have solid paragraphs of copy, try adding bullets and subheadings to break it up and make it easier to read. Even something as simple as changing your link styles (color, decoration, etc.), can make visitors more willing to click around.
Cut It In Half
Paragraph after paragraph of text is rarely effective. It’s just too much information that your visitors probably don’t care about or don’t have time to read through. If changing up the formatting doesn’t help on its own, take a good long look at your copy and ask yourself if you really need that much. There is probably a shorter and more direct way to get the point across.
Repeat Your Call to Action
You want your site visitors to do something; you wouldn’t have a web site if you didn’t. That call to action needs to be placed on every page where it’s relevant. Do you want them to schedule a call, email you for your rates, opt-in to your list? Tell them that, and don’t be afraid to repeat it.
When is the last time you took a close look at your core pages? Do you think a freshening up is in your future?
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Tables are our friends in Website Design
July 23rd, 2010
Tables are our friends in Website Design! They allow us to show large amounts of information in a small space, but when designing tables for print or the web there are a number of guidelines you should keep in mind. The main aim when creating a table of data is to make it easy to digest what otherwise could be a large chunk of textual information. It’s the designer’s job to choose suitable backgrounds, borders, typography and images that go into a table to make it eye-catching and informative.
1. Breathing Space. Make sure the data in the table cell has some padding around it so that the information is easy to read.
2. Typography. Generally it’s a good idea to avoid script and decorative typefaces and instead choose clean, legible serif or sans-serif fonts.
Increasing reader interaction on your website.
July 17th, 2010
All too often, we worry about unique visitors, overlooking the important metric that is visitor engagement. Not only will these simple tips make a real and quantifiable impact on your site traffic, but they should also help to retain the visitors that you’ve worked so hard to get on your site.
Find the problematic pages
When you’ve an established presence, it becomes more and more important to start to analyse your content and the ways in which people interact with it. With social media being such a powerhorse for traffic, interaction and engagement are fast becoming the new backlink, and knowing how people are reacting, can help you maximise the impact your content is having.
Doing so can help to open up a couple of opportunities, and even provide ideas for fresh content. Find your popular content, re-read, and expand upon it to make it even better.
Homepage Design – Using and Designing Page Headers
January 7th, 2010
Make a good first impression on your visitors by designing a homepage header that combines clarity with visual flair.
A website’s header is the first part of a page a visitor sees and, being higher than all other page elements, it has the potential to impress before anything else. Headers have to consider the clarity of navigation, but because they rarely contain any substantial content, they have the freedom to run wild with graphic flourishes and embellishments.
Make a good first impression on your visitors by designing a homepage header that combines clarity with visual flair.