Strategy Development: What Does Your Website Say About Your Business?

We're working on several website projects these days and thought it would be worthwhile to talk about the [sometimes painful] task of creating content for your website.

So you finally made the decision to update your website. It's an exciting time: you are shedding the old and starting with the new. You've hired your website team and they're excited (because this time you've decided not to make the same mistakes from five years ago, where you kept a lot of the work in-house to save a little money). Perhaps you'll even add a cool technology wiz-bang feature that will make you proud to send people to your website.

Does the pain immediately hit you? Someone has to write the content. The website team offered their copywriting service, but you are worried they won't quite get your business. I mean, it's so complex! How could they?? You'll spend hours writing, editing, re-writing, and editing again. Or perhaps you'll ask different departments to write copy to spread out the pain--err, work load. Or maybe you'll write the content once you see how the website is designed. That would certainly be easier, right? (BTW, hopefully your designer will balk at this last suggestion.)

Writing content for your website is just as important as the graphic design. No matter how you cut it, it's a big task. Whether taking on the writing or spreading out the task--either way--it all must come back in one cohesive tone that leads customers down one path: to contact you.

So how do you make this task easier on yourself? Whether you hire the website team to write the copy or you keep it in-house, you must first always start with a few key questions:

--What are my goals for the website?
--What do I want people to do when they come to my website?
--What are the key messages I want people to glean from the home page?
--What are the most important pages?
--How will information be organized?
--How will we integrate social media and rich content?
--What is the 'tone' I want for my website?


Too often companies approach the content for the website in a vacuum and leave off the most important task of developing the over-arching strategy. Without the big picture in mind, you might very well find yourself in Website Content Hell (trust me, it's a real place), writing and re-writing content until you can't remember why you ever decided to even do this.

Here's how we help clients (either for those who write it themselves or when we write it for them):

• Spend time developing the navigation of the site and closely evaluate each page to make sure you have organized all the information you'd like to include.
• Create a master document (or "script") that has each page in the navigation.
• Set limits for content on each page (up to 100 words for parent pages, etc.).
• On your master document, include a space for keywords that people will enter in a Google search to find your website. Include those keywords in the copy on that page.
• Include 2-3 goals for each page so you can stay focused on what you want to accomplish.
• Get feedback from others (Does it make sense? What comes to mind when you read this? Does it make you want to pick up the phone and call?).
• Compile photos, videos, etc.
• Make sure the tone and the language are appropriate for your audience (I am still trying to cut out the "busini-babble").

It is important not to fall in the trap of thinking you can just re-tool the content once the site is complete. It is worthwhile to invest the time up-front in developing the strategy for the site and ensure the content follows appropriately. It doesn't mean you can't make changes later, but a cohesive website will be designed with content--and the strategy--in mind.

Have you recently developed your site? We'd love to hear from you to see if this fits your experience...


And, just because we're crazy for haikus, here's a little treat for you:

Create web content
Strategy goes a long way
Writing made easy