This week I’ve been in web optimisation mode and the picks for the newsletter reflect that.
It’s always good to be reminded of the principle of going back to your users – who are they, and what do you want them to know, feel and do on your site?
Is this for the bots or the people?
When you’re reviewing the content for your website, you need to have two strands in mind – is this content for search engines, or for users?
It is both an art and a science to create good website copy that works for SEO to get people to your site, and is helpful to users trying to navigate it. Try and have in your head which purpose a piece of copy solves as you write it.
We love this guide from Search Engine Journal on on-page SEO and this one from Shopify has good prompts for UX writing.
What’s really the issue?
Time and again we start a conversation with a client about how they think they need a new website. But once we dig into the brief, it’s often not necessary.
Before you start diving into CMS choices and designs, have you checked the following?
- A revisit of the content toolkit and web components you already have and have forgotten about – it may turn out you can build that page you wanted
- Build a simple user journey map and make sure there is up-to-date content and a clear path through the site for each major journey (Home -> services -> Service detail -> case study -> Contact formis a good place to start with a B2B site)
- Rewrite the main content to make sense to an external person who hasn’t worked with the business before
Take a step back and re-map your user journey and the information your users will need at each stage of the process. If you can make that plan before you start faffing with web pages you’ll have a better time. Promise.
Image credit: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/customer-journey-mapping/
