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Get the web content to work together with the design to meet your goals.
These
days, you can’t just throw up any generic selling site and expect a
vault of cash to land in your lap. When creating a website, you want
the entire site, design and copy, to speak to a
specific target audience in a specific sort of way. At the same time,
you want to be found and indexed so you show up in organic searches.
Your
goal is to create a balance that includes a choreographed arrangement
of copy and visuals to make web pages more attractive and target market
friendly. This is the key to creating a website as an effective sales
and marketing tool.
Presentation of content is the key to readability and conversions.
A cleaner, neater design makes any product, service or organization
look more credible while the content validates that point. But good
content is only good if visitors can find what they’re looking for and
they’re able to read it. A first-rate web page presentation includes
(examples are at the bottom of this article):
- Navigation that makes sense
- Breaking up the copy in bite-sized chunks with paragraphs, subheads or bold sentences that punctuate a subject
- Setting off and using bullet points to highlight key product benefits
- Using a font that is a size people can see
- Captioning a photo to break up the copy which adds visual interest and highlights a benefit
- Open up the leading (space between the lines) so it’s not so squishy it resembles an “endless sea of type”
- Reasonable use of reversed out type (white on black) since too much can be hard on the eyes.
- Some air in the design to allow you to create focal points. (Resist the urge to fill every nook and cranny with something.)
Where are the web page hot spots?
Visually, from the standpoint of most visitors, your web page hot spot
is the top left hand corner like you see in the diagram.
From the standpoint of the search engines, the page hot spot is what shows up in the first few lines of that seo text browser.
We all know that the words and phrases closest to the top are the
most important as are hyperlinks and headings (i.e.
<h1></h2> tags).
In looking at your web page in design mode, the words or sentences
that are at the top of your layout might not be the first ones in that
text browser. That’s why it’s important to check and see. I’ve had
layouts where the right hand column was the first thing that showed up
in a text browser--making that the key area for keywords and search
engine optimization.
And while it’s also true that hyperlinked phrases are great for SEO,
sprinkling links randomly about in the body copy is a recipe for update
disaster. It’s also an annoying interruption to those reading the
content. So setting a place for links in a sidebar or isolating them
together in a designated place like a box, achieves all goals—easier
page upkeep, search optimization and the more organized navigation that
visitors like.
Finding the balance between search engine optimization and visitor
interest means you don’t sacrifice a killer headline or tag line to
plug in a keyword. Conversely, you don’t act like a designer or
copywriter snob and ignore the importance of incorporating keywords in
key places.
Those are just some of the tips on getting your copy and design to
work well together to inspire visitors to stay, buy, click, join,
return or recommend you. Now all you have to do is get them to your
website. :)
Copy Treatment Examples:
Bullet Points highlight key benefits:
Leading that is is too squishy is hard to read.
vs.
Leading that is more open is more reader friendly
You can open up the leading in the .css stylesheet or style tags with
p { line-height: 2.0em }
About the Author
Anne Moss Rogers: My eTutorial, WebPrepPro,
illustrates a process of web development created by a professional who
has 20+ years experience turning marketing strategies into memorable
advertising and websites. I have an advertising
agency background and my clients have included national brands to local
businesses. Everything I create from small space print to websites, is
positioned to speak to a target market. I am a graduate of UNC-CH with
a degree in Journalism.
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