Content is King

Ever heard that phrase before?   Well that’s our motto. It’s all just smoke and mirrors if you don’t have effective content that easily found and persuades your audience to take action.

OK, Now Where Do I Begin?

For starters you can check out this article about why your web content isn’t working.

Then start with an outline of what pages you think you NEED on your web site.  This outline will then evolve into your site navigation (you know – that bar at the top of the page where you click on where you wanna go).   Below is a basic example.   Remember, keep it simple.   Not all your website visitors will be as smart as you are.

• Home
• About
• Services
• Products
• Contact

Now expand on this.   The Home page will be the “cover of your magazine.”   You want to grab your visitors and get them to look around.   Think about the term “sticky.”   Get them excited and make them want to read more!

Most websites should include an About page. Think this it’s not important? Think again! This is where you communicate “who you are.” Read more about why your About page is important in this definitive guide to about me pages.

For pages like Services and Products, you want to explain what you do or sell, but more importantly, you should include a CALL TO ACTION.  Get those visitors to do something!  Ask them to buy your product.  Ask them to pick up the phone.  You didn’t spend all that time and money to have a web site for the sake of having one.

For the Contact page, you should decide whether you want to have a contact form, and/or just a phone number and email address. Using only a contact form will prevent spamming software from picking up your email address.   Yes sadly, there is software out there that just scans web pages with the sole purpose of picking up email address in order to spam you. There’s not a right or wrong answer out there in my opinion. You just need to decide what’s most important to you.

Keep it Fresh!

Let’s face it: throwing up a few web pages and sitting back waiting for something to happen is not going to yield the results you’re looking for.  If you want your visitors to come back, you need to offer them something – like fresh content.   The easiest way to do this is with a blog.   If you don’t know how to write a blog, check out this article for some good starting places.

Don’t Forget the Pretty Pictures

No matter how awesome your web copy is, you need some interesting imagery to get people excited.  Images help your site visitors identify with and relate to your written content.  If you don’t have great photos, it’s not a big deal.   There are lots of great places on the web to purchase affordable stock photos (and don’t think stealing photos off the web is a good idea to save a buck – copyright laws in the US are heavily in favor of the creator). If you have images that need to be shot, get a decent photographer.   Bad pictures don’t sell anything.

Make Your Content Easily Found

We utilize best practices for on-page optimization which refers to the code and content that the search engines use to index the site.   We also research key terms and make sure those terms are being used effectively both within the content and the code on your site. This should be done for both the   content on the main pages of your site and the blog.

But I’m Not a Writer!

Don’t worry, that’s why we have writers.   You can focus on what you do best: running your business. Visual Adventures works with writers that will turn your semi-legible rantings into top-notch online content.

Seriously: leave the writing to us.