Become content with your website’s content

If you are planning the content for your website and constantly see yourself up to your ears in sheets of paper, materials gathered on your hard disc, folders containing almost thousands of photos and documents, now it’s high time to say: STOP!

We all know how difficult it is to put everything in order and choose the jewels from stones – almost everybody has problems with organising texts and materials, indeed. Though it’s not impossible.

Follow our tips, and everything is going to become easier – both for you (to organise and plan website content perfectly) and for us (to make your dreams about an ideal website come true).

Are you already an owner of a website?

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes or ask somebody to help you. Open your website and think about:

• What does your client need to find straightaway after opening your page?
• Do subtitles help while looking for something, or are they misleading?
• Are menu labels intuitive?

In short – go throughout your page, copy all written things to a text editor or print them, and analyse what should be added, moved to a different section or completely removed. Write down all your thoughts, some of them you’ll later reject, but many can be helpful even if on the spot they seem to be inappropriate.

Arrange all printed materials

Start from brochures, catalogues, booklets, handbooks – if you have any, of course. Put them in one place, in some kind of order: chronologically, according to their topic or in another proper way. If possible, save their digital versions in one folder.

Are there any paper forms which you can add to the website so that people can print them and fill in without the need of coming to your office?

Building the trust

As a customer or a client, everyone needs to be ensured that the company does deserve his trust.

• Have you got a story of establishing your company? Or even a file with important dates?
• Are there any testimonials from your former partners or clients?
• Have you ever got any more or less significant awards? Put them all in a right order (according to chronology or their importance).
• Have there ever been any articles about you or your company printed in newspapers or another published documents?
• Complete a short CVs or biographies of you and your staff. Make it look professional – including photos is not a bad idea, too.
• Think about Frequently Asked Questions – are there any, which you can put together and make a little guide for your customers?
• Is your company involved in any kind of charity work? Helping non-profit organisations? Donations for schools or foundations? Don’t forget about anything.

The most useful

Consider what people can be particularly looking for.

• Directions how to get to your location/locations? Remember about a small map.
• Opening hours? Make sure they are always updated.
• Contact? Add every means which you use, phone and e-mail are essential, but consider including your skype login or any other communicators that are in use at your office. Take into account that phone call is not free – in contrast to use of a communicator.
• Job offers? If you employ a lot of people it would be a good idea to inform on your website who are you looking for at the moment. What is obvious, updates are also necessary here.

Graphics

Try to find graphic files of the best quality. Pay attention to the resolution of an image, remember that too many graphics on your website will not make it better, but do not forget about those, which are indispensable.

If you suffer from lack of images – some suppliers offer photos of products on their websites to help you sell their products, check whether their graphics are of better quality than yours.

At the same time:

• Put everything into categories – folders, piles or whatever – just to make things easy to be found
• Add keywords to all categories
• Draw a site-map if you have one in your mind. Organise content into sections with headings, subtitles, short descriptions. Let a sentence: “everything must be easily found!” become your motto.

After such an organisation of the content sometimes website plan takes on a whole new dimension – but be sure – it has never been a change for worse!