If your business doesn’t have the resources or inclination to respond to incoming emails and voice mails, then don’t invite them.

Do not trick people into going to the trouble of filling out your customer service form, explaining their query, and waiting for a response, if you don’t have a system in place to give them one promptly. Even an automated response is better than silence.

Because silence is a slap in the face. Silence tells prospects one of 2 things:

“Yes, I lured you to my site, enticed you with my offer, promised to answer your questions should you have any. But I’m busy with more important stuff.”

Or:

“We’re a fly-by-night ecommerce operation, set up only to sell stuff, not to stand behind it.”

Either way, a contact us page under those conditions is a liability because those jilted prospects won’t convert and won’t be back. And won’t speak well of you to others. But then, if you cared about that, you’d have answered their email.

 

“Do the company have a guarantee?”

 

That little hiccup caused me to pause in my progress through an otherwise engaging article. It caused me to stop and think about my own proofreading and editing.

Because nothing chips away at customer confidence like the proverbial shoemaker whose kids go barefoot. Or the article writer whose own self-promotional copy has errors.

Your articles and web content can be full of great insights and excellent offers. It can be engaging, thought-provoking and compelling. But if you slip up and omit a word or insert a typo, something that isn’t a big deal in everyday writing can make your readers stumble. It trips them up on their way towards a possible conversion.

Worse, it raises a chilling thought: If I hire her, will my new shoes fall apart too? Will my new content have mistakes?

Web Content Proofreading Tips:

• Pass your web content through a spell checker. It won’t catch everything, so don’t rely on this method alone.
• Sleep on it or at least wait a few hours and reproof the content before publishing.
• Try reading it aloud.
• Read it backwards, last sentence first.
• Have someone else do your proofreading. You’ll be surprised what they catch.

Here’s a prime example of web content that made me want to scream at my monitor: “Yes, but… what exactly do you DO?”

(Our) key strength is our focused specialization in building, integrating and supporting mission-critical business applications and systems to deliver the solutions that achieve your business objectives. Our integrated Global Practices, blended with our best-of-breed tools, standardized processes and skilled resources, enable a consolidated, end-to-end focus for your mission-critical applications and systems.

Vague platitudes, blustery boasts, and industry jargon (words like solutions, processes, integration) are not just boring to read. They usually fail in the critical task of communicating clearly to your audience.

So. Does your web copy pass the sniff test? Can first-time visitors quickly find out:

• What you do, exactly?
• Who you do it for?
• What problem(s) you solve?
• How you solve them better than your competitors?

If visitors have to search for the answers, if they have to spend a lot of time deciphering overly long sentences and industry lingo, then you may be forcing them to work too hard to receive your message. And that never ends well.

That phrase was “adjectival pile up”, a thing to be avoided as fervently as split infinitives and dangling participles once were. Here’s why that rule, unlike so many others, has stood the test of time and is still valid — maybe even moreso — when writing web content today.

News Story:

A 13-adjective pile up brought operations at a drug industry newsletter to a standstill Tuesday afternoon.

Local grammar police said they’d never responded to such a large mash-up. No one except the English language was hurt.

The offending adjectival pile up: “Multiple-dose, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter, multinational, unbalanced, parallel-group comparison study”

It’s a satirical example that reminds us to be ever vigilant in our web writing for the less dangerous but just as annoying 3 and 4 word adjectival pile up.

They slow down our readers (a cardinal sin all on its own), force them to re-read our copy to gain clarity, and make journalism instructors really cranky.

So, does choosing to ignore a major social media juggernaut like Twitter make me a backwards Luddite or some kind of misguided rebel?

Neither. I’m just not wired to enjoy communicating in the text equivalent of 3 second sound bites. I haven’t felt compelled to hijack Twitter to build my client base. In fact, there’s something slightly distasteful about the way marketers repurpose every new “thing” into a way to make money.

It reminds me of fashion designers who steal the latest street trend, hang it on a model, and parade it down the catwalk… coming soon to a JC Penney near you. Really??

Twitter. Facebook. Linked In. Now Pinterest. All have been highjacked by marketers who tell businesses we simply must get on board.

But who has time to maintain all those social media accounts in a meaningful way??

I agree with marketing writer Dianna Huff who wrote in her blog (which I read for enjoyment and information, not as a vehicle to be leveraged for my own financial gain):

“It’s better to go deeper with fewer connections and a couple of white papers or an e-book than it is to constantly post superficial crap to thousands of people who just ignore it.”

True that, Dianna. True that.

I was researching law firms recently for a new project when I came across a site so incongruous I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was for a small law office that specializes in corporate, real estate, and family law.

Nothing on the home page conformed to my expectations of how a lawyer’s website should look.

• The web design template looked homemade and rudimentary.
• There was no textual content on the home page.
• Instead, the page was dominated by 2 graphic elements: a large head shot of the lawyer and an equally large cartoon!

It wasn’t a particularly funny cartoon either, nor well executed nor very pertinent to the practice of law.

How to Establish Credibility

Credibility is a tricky thing. It looks different depending on who you ask. But there are some standard web design and content guidelines you can usually rely on:

• Content: You don’t need volumes of text but you do need enough to explain, persuade and guide your visitors to action.
• Design: The colors, images and web design should reflect your industry and the values of your target audience.
• Usability: If navigation menus are standardized and intuitive, it shows you care about the visitor experience.

I found myself wondering how a company could make any money writing resumes these days. I mean, there are so many resume services already out there. And so many people write their own resumes.

So I dug deeper into the site’s web content trying to ferret out how I could help the business differentiate itself. And I found a clue near the bottom of the FAQ page. (It’s surprising how many companies hide these nuggets on low-traffic pages.)

Q: Can you help me with every phase of my job search?

A: As a comprehensive and full-service career marketing firm, we can indeed help you with each and every phase of your job search…

Hallelujah! 

Much more than just writing resumes and cover letters, these amazing people can identify recruiters and job postings suited to my career goals, post my resume online without my boss knowing, help me with interview skills and even write my Johnny Paycheck letter (“Take this Job and Shove It”).

Unfortunately, 99.9% of this site’s visitors will never get to experience that hallelujah moment because it’s buried deeply within the web content.

What about your web content… is your top benefit hidden in well-meaning but generic copy? Are you marketing your low cost service instead of a more profitable and rewarding one?

Think about what your prospects really want from you. Do they just want a resume? Or do they really want career advancement?

Do they just want new accounting software? Or do they really want to streamline routine tasks so they can spend time on other work?

When you know what your target audience really wants, the direction for your web content becomes much clearer.

A mind map lets you create a visual diagram of the site navigation structure or tree. Here’s a fairly simple mind map I created for a client a few years ago:

Sample Mind Map for Website Planning

Color coding and icons allow you to specify features of your site navigation such as 2nd, 3rd and 4th level pages. And the scope of the diagram is only limited by screen size so even a complex navigation structure can be mapped out.

Once the plan is finalized, the mind map can be shared with all members of the development team: web designer, content writer, marketing, etc.

There is paid mind mapping software, but I use Free Mind and it’s perfectly excellent. And free. Learn more about Free Mind software here. (not an affiliate link, just a great product.)

“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Good advice from the King to the White Rabbit. And when planning or updating a website, it would seem natural to plan your Home page first, then work through the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th level pages from there.

But it’s actually more effective to begin a website content upgrade at the end and go on till you come to the beginning. Then stop. Why?

1. Working backwards forces you to become intimately familiar with every part of a website.
2. It can reveal problems and omissions you might not notice otherwise.
3. It can ensure your site navigation is in order before the content writing phase begins.
4. It leads to a more streamlined, cost effective process overall.

Coming up in my next Tip:  How to organize your website by creating a site plan with a “mind map”.

The text I wrote ended up in a single column sprawled across the entire width of the screen… and with monitors getting bigger all the time, that’s a long haul for a line of copy!

No matter how scintillating the words, they may not survive a bad layout.

Content Usability

An overly wide column of text is a pain because it requires the eye to traverse back across the screen to find where the next line begins. Or, more likely, not find it. It’s one of the reasons why two- and three-column web layouts evolved.

Other text layout problems that can easily be avoided:

• Long blocks of copy. Instant turn off for visitors in a hurry. A variety of sentence and paragraph lengths makes the copy appear less intimidating and more enjoyable to read.
• No subheadings. Readers use subheadings as sign posts to help them scan your page. Without subs, it’s just another endless page of copy they can live without.
• Light text, dark background. It’s not only hard on the eyes after a while but has a casual look that isn’t appropriate for most business websites.

If you’re interested in learning more about website usability, sign up for Jakob Neilsen’s very excellent, free newsletter at www.useit.com. There’s a wealth of information on his site, too.

If you’d like a free evaluation of your site’s usability, just ask… it’s included in my free website content analysis.