If you are having a new website created or redesigning your current site you will need to supply your web designer with content.

Here’s some guidance on:

• Creating a clear message
• Do’s and don’ts to creating easy-to-read content
• Creating meaningful links
• Preparing the final copy

Visitors come to your website for information. They scan your content, hopefully get what they want, do what you want them to do and go. Your job in writing the content of your website is to allow this to happen as easily and efficiently as possible.

Creating a clear message

The purpose of your website

Define the purpose of your site. Is it to sell a product or service, create an email marketing list or make information available to customers, etc.? Everything in your site should contribute to this purpose.

Who are you writing for?

Think about the characteristics of your audience and tailor your content to their needs.

• What is their knowledge and expertise?
• What emotions will appeal to them?
• What technology will they be familiar with?
• What is their social and cultural background?

The Home page

Your home page should instantly identify what your site is about, who is behind it and establish your brand. You have a matter of seconds to achieve this!

From the home page it needs to be clear what is in the rest of your website and where the visitor can go to find the information they need.

You can use headings, short descriptions, links and relevant pictures to do this.

Call to action

It’s important to let visitors know what action you want them to take.

It’s not pushy to do this! How will they know if you don’t tell them? They need to be prompted to complete the action that you want them to do, so make this clear.

Content do’s and don’ts

Do’s

• Start with the headline and summary and add further information. This way visitors will be able to scan your key points and read more if they want to.
• Cut and simplify. Write some content, review it and cut out anything unnecessary. Cut and cut again!
• Encourage people to read your content by making the first sentences of your content the best ones. This makes them much more likely to continue reading. Using keywords at the beginning of sentences will help.
• Add keywords that people may search for, however, don’t overdo this and compromise readability.
• Break up walls of words with headings, subheadings and bulleted lists.
• Use simple, short sentences. Short or one sentence paragraphs are ok.

Don’ts

• Don’t write more than is necessary. Remember you are writing a website not a book. Is all this information really necessary to get the visitor to perform your call to action? People want to know what they can get from your site, they are not necessarily interested in you or the complete history of your subject.
• Don’t use “he” or “she”. Talk to your visitors with “you”.
• Don’t use jargon unless you are sure your visitors will understand it.
• Don’t confuse your reader with inconsistent tenses.

Creating meaningful links

Write links that make it obvious where the link goes. Just “click here” or “read more” isn’t enough. Use a small note or icon to illustrate if necessary.

As well as informing visitors where the link is going it informs search engines as to the subject of the linked-to page.

Preparing the final copy

Read and re-read your content. Sometimes it’s best to come back to it the next day. Reading it out loud is useful. Does it read and flow easily?

Of course you should check your facts and do a spellcheck but don’t rely on a spellchecker. Ideally get a friend to read it and get their feedback.

Think objectively about your content and don’t get offended if the feedback is negative. The important thing is to get content that is optimised for your audience, not what necessary appeals to you.

I highly recommend reading “Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content” by Janice Redish.

As your website grows you increasingly need to protect your data. As well as the data that you add yourself like blog posts, images and pages there is the WordPress database, plugins, scripts and widgets that are part of your website. It’s a complicated mix of data that could mean lenghtly downtime or even complete loss if something were to happen to it.

Threats to data security

Data loss can be the result of theft, viruses, natural disasters, technical problems and hacking. The hacking problem is becoming an increasing concern. One day you may wake up to see your website has been hacked by a dodgy pharma company and it’s been covered with advertising.

An affordable and easy solution

For a minimal monthly fee I can look after all of this and give you peace of mind with remote backups. If your site is ever compromised it can be quickly and easily restored.

The whole of your website is backed up daily or weekly and it’s integrity is checked before sending to off-site, remote Amazon servers in Europe. They are the same reliable and secure servers than Amazon uses to run its own global network of websites.

Authentication and encryption mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorised access.

Simplicity

With remote backups there is no need to be concerned with the safety of your data and there is nothing for you to do.

Traditional backups are often done using an on-site server, and many companies assume that this will be enough to keep precious data safe. In reality, only online data can guarantee that your data is secure, using off-site servers that allow easy access to backed-up data, whenever you need it.

The media loves gloomy stories. It gives them something to talk about and sell papers, but it doesn’t take much of a Google search to find numerous reports showing there is growth especially in the explosion of online sales.

If you’re thinking about getting online or having your old website revamped there’s never been a better time to do it.

A report from the Interactive Media in Retail Group

• The UK is Europe’s leading e-retail economy, with sales estimated to reach €81bn in 2011
• Global e-retail sales increased by almost 25% to €591bn in 2010
• The UK e-retail market is currently growing at 16% per annum, in spite of the recession
• e-Retail contributed 9.4% of total retail sales in May 2011 (excluding automotive fuel): source ONS
• The UK’s per capita spend of €1333 per annum is the highest in the world
• The digital commerce market provides employment for over 730,000 people in the UK
• 37 million people shop online in the UK
• More than one billion parcels are shipped from online purchases each year in the UK