Three Major Web Copy Mistakes |
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Having high quality web content is the most important factor in the success of a website. Here are some ways people commonly shoot their website in the foot: - Not taking the web copy seriously. Content is King on the Internet. If you want your website to be successful, you must have quality content. Copying text from other websites, writing poor quality content quickly "just to have something," or putting "under construction" in place of content are the 3 most common examples if this mistake.
- Not knowing the difference between effective web copy and effective print copy. For the most part, people don't read websites, they scan them. For that reason effective web copy is significantly different than effective print copy. The most common example of this mistake that I see is writing too much text in the mistaken assumption that people will read it as they would a passage from a book. Although it may be a very convincing argument as to why someone should buy the product, or use the service, if it is too long, people just aren't going to read it at all. Above all, web copy needs to be concise.
- Waiting until the last minute to provide the web copy to your web designer. I'd say most small business people that I work with start off their first real web design project with a mistaken idea of how a successful project is executed. Even if the process is laid out clearly and specifically, most people cling to the notion that a website is built first, and the content is written and added to the website last. Proceeding in this fashion can have only two outcomes. Either the website will be very expensive, or it will be poorly designed.
When a website is built without the content, the designer must guess what he/she is trying to present to the visitor. Once the content arrives, it is ALWAYS different in some respect to what he/she had planned for. The website must then be redesigned in order to properly present the actual content, once it arrives. This is very expensive for the buyer, because they are not only paying for the site to be designed once, but twice.
The other option is just to force the content into the existing design, and kludge where necessary. When you run across a poorly designed user-hostile website, there is a good chance that this factor played into that poor design.
The purpose of a website is to present content or functionality to the visitor. Content should be given first priority in any web project. Step One: Create quality content - use a copy writer if necessary. Step Two: Build a quality website that best presents that quality content. Follow that simple formula, and your next web project is likely to be a success!
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