Just like any business, yours has a purpose. You didn’t spend years building and creating a business just for it to sit there and exist, did you? Your business exists to provide a product, service or experience.
Just like your website.
Your website leads customers on a path towards your purpose with the aim to ultimately end in a lead. From the moment a user lands on your website, it’s a journey from A to B – and the usability of your website will make or break the sale.
The content on your webpages is now more valuable than ever before; it is arguably the most valuable element of your whole website, as it shares the most important information you want potential customers to know.
It is no longer acceptable to bash out a few sentences and expect them to turn into sales; the digital realm is ever expanding and if your content is poor with little information between the lines then customers know they can find multiple other websites that will give them the answers they require.
Your rankings will suffer immensely if your measly amount of content is keyword stuffed and spammy, it needs to ask and answer questions that Google deems helpful to the user in their buying process.
Content isn’t just about information, it’s about usability and guiding the user to a decision. Keep reading to discover three ways in which you can enhance your content and ultimately improve usability!
Buyer Journey
The easiest way to know how to create content that will help the user in their buying journey is to understand the different steps of their journey. It usually looks something like this:
- Awareness of a product
- Consideration of if and why they need the product
- Decision to buy a product
So, looking at this journey we can see that different content will need to be crafted for each step in order to streamline the process and help the user out at every opportunity. Three content pieces you could write in order to follow this structure are:
- Information about the product
- The product in action/case study
- Benefits of the product
Be Visual
We are all visual beings and naturally gravitate to things that stand out, so it isn’t only the content you write that holds the key to closing a sale – the imagery packs the punch. Simple changes to a website can create massive contract and visual cues, changes such as:
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Bold text
- Italic text
- Varied paragraph lengths
- Imagery
- Colouring
By using elements such as newsletter subscribe buttons, video media to increase time on page and downloadable content to your advantage you can transform your content pages from simply being informative to being valuable to your business.
Behind The Scenes
Usability isn’t only about elements you can see on the page, it’s what goes on behind the scenes. Your pages should be accessible on all devices, especially mobile due to recent Google algorithm changes, which means the following areas must be optimised:
- Accessibility
- Experience
- Speed
Improving the usability of your website isn’t easy and doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a lot of A/B testing and collaborations between departments/agencies so that your pages are not only accessible to search engines but also engaging for users.
Stuck for ideas on how to make your webpages interesting without damaging your SEO? Get in touch with In Front Digital and see how we can help!