We all like an attractively designed website, but it is the words on your website that draw traffic to it in the first place and inspire brand loyalty. This article outlines the types of text that you need to draw in visitors and, ultimately, make sales.
Carefully worded website text is vital to give visitors a clear idea of what products and services your business offers. People have short attention spans, and they may be viewing your website on a smartphone, so the home page must summarise your offering in a few sentences.
Once you have captured their attention, you want to keep them interested by providing further details about all your products or services, using other pages of the website.
You also want to build trust in your brand. This is achieved through a variety of means, but this article focuses on how text can be used as a powerful tool.
Effective website text
Your brand may not be a household name yet, so how do you begin to build customers for your product? Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer. What search terms will they be asking Google about to find your business? Are those words, phrases and questions mentioned on your website? They should be.
Alongside the essentials of the home page text, you can demonstrate your expertise in your field with a series of in-depth articles about each aspect of the business.
Showing your expertise helps the customer understand the offering and builds their trust. They see that you know what you are talking about, based on how you share your knowledge and experience.
They are also being educated on your products, enabling them to make the right decision about which product to buy for their specific need. The text you present on your website subtly pulls the customer in to your brand, making them more willing to buy from you.
Product descriptions attract sales
Similarly, product descriptions can draw in organic traffic from the web. Product names can be backed up with detailed information about what each item does, when and how it should be used, and how it benefits the buyer. Customers who understand the choices on offer are more likely to make a purchase.
There is also the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell other products here. Perhaps that customer would buy a new hairdryer or styling product alongside those hair straighteners? Or maybe the lawnmower that can create a wider stripe or has a larger grass container would be a better choice on the garden machinery website? Accurate and clear explanations of products can help the customer choose – or even tempt them into further purchases or more expensive ranges.
Blogs for your website
As well as the core pages on your website, blogs are a great way to attract more visitors and show that you have an active site and business.
What is a blog? Essentially, it is an online article that can be short or long, formal or informal. It is a way of giving additional information around your core business themes. Often, blogs can be chatty in style and present the more ‘human’ side of your business.
Having a batch of regular and recent blog posts on a website show the customer that you are committed to the brand, thereby building their trust in you and your business.
People like to feel they are getting to know you and your brand on a more personal level. They want a relationship with your brand and will reward you with loyalty and sales. The most keen will become brand evangelists – telling their friends and colleagues about how great your company is because they received useful information, a fantastic product and/or faultless customer service.
Blogs provide an opportunity to talk about the broader topics around your business that may not be covered by the core website text. They can be a great marketing tool. For example, they can talk about the launch of a new product, attendance at a conference or show, highlight a special offer, showcase an award win, explain why and how something is made, cover a niche subject, or any other relevant news.
These blogs will build into a valuable resource on the website over time, attracting more organic traffic to find you through careful use of key words and information related to your business. They give visitors more reason to stay on the website for longer. This means they are increasingly interested in your products or services and more likely to buy.
Plus, blogs enable customers to comment on the stories. This feedback shows that this content is valued and engaging. Such activity is rewarded by search engines, which bring the most popular blogs up the search rankings, making your business more visible to future searchers.
You may want to encourage website visitors to sign up to a newsletter, which includes links to all your blogs and exclusive offers for subscribers. This draws customers back to the website (encouraging them to look around again), building brand loyalty and the likelihood of further sales.
Another important benefit of adding new content to your website regularly is that search engines check websites’ content frequently and respond positively to those that post fresh content. This is a further way to rise up the search rankings.
A few years ago, it was possible to boost a website’s search position simply by writing some basic text and shoehorning in key words or key phrases, even when this made the blog sound unnatural and provided little or no value to the reader. Today, I am pleased to say, that sort of practice is marked down. Search engines are more sophisticated and rank informative and useful articles higher.
And finally, always ensure the text on your website is kept up to date. You don’t want to annoy your customer with old or inaccurate content. Visitors should be able to view the latest product selection and see current offers and news. While an active and informative website promotes trust and brand awareness, a tired and basic website gives a poor impression.
I hope this article has helped to explain what sort of content should be used on your website, and how it is invaluable to attract organic traffic and help turn visitors into customers.
Yes, it can be a challenge to find time to outline topics, devise a content plan and write the text. However, as has been shown, good website text and regular blogs can promote and grow your business.
If you’d like some help, do get in touch – we specialise in effective content creation.