Content Management Systems (CMS) are wonderful.
OK, some are.
But they do, at least, allow you to control the content in your website. You can add your own photographs, write as much copy as you want, edit the copy, add pages – in fact, you are completely free to ruin that fantastic design that made your site look so great when it was first launched! Ah, freedom…
So if your site is not exactly doing what you wanted it to do (most commonly, send customers do your door/inbox inundating you with business), what can you do?
1. Call to Action.
This may have been discussed when your site was designed. A call to action is what visitors are to do with your site. Sure, they can marvel at the beauty in the photographs you shot on your family vacation, and spend hours pondering the complex sentence structure in your beautifully written prose, but are they compelled to do something about it?
Look at your home page (or other landing page) and squint. What do you see? A grey blur? What jumps out at you? If it isn’t immediately obvious with a quick (unfocussed) glance, your visitors won’t know either.
Make sure there is a clear, prominent and obvious next step, usually a button that the visitor will click. If you want them to email you right away, make that button take them to a contact form. If your gallery of services or products is what you want them to see, make the link take them to your showcase.
2. Less Copy is More Copy.
People don’t read thousands of words. They read fewer words. You read this point first, didn’t you?
3. The Customer is The Customer.
Why are you writing about you? Visitors, or customers, are only interested in one person, the one in the mirror. Customers don’t want to read an autobiography, they want to read what is in it for them. What will your product do for them? Why is your service the one they need? Tell the visitor about them, engage them, and they will feel compelled to buy.
4. More Choices Delay Choices.
If you have ever sat down in a restaurant with a ten page menu and ordered the first time the server came to your table, you were either very hungry or not terribly adventurous. If you are like most people, you will need time to decide. Simple enough isn’t it? So why does your website have fourteen menu items, with 36 drop down options and 112 text links on the bottom of each page? Wow, that’s going to take me all day to sort through all that to find what I need. I’m going back to Google.
Keep your menu items to about six to make it easier to choose. Choice is good, decision is better!
5. Design is your friend.
Yes, content is important. Without it, websites would just be pretty outlines. But the design is what leads the eye and introduces the brand a lot quicker than words ever can. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is also quicker to read. So make sure the design of your site is consistent from page to page. Your CMS may allow you to choose different templates or choose from a rainbow of colours. Consistency in design will not only make visitors feel like they are still at the same site, it will make your business appear consistent, clean, polished and professional.
Keep it simple. Be direct. Get the job done.
Questions? Post them here or contact NBurman Design here. NBurman Design recommends SiteCM Content Management from ideaLEVER.