Double Your Enquiries in 2008 - Part 3 - Content

This is Part 3 of the series Double Your Enquiries in 2008

In the last blog post I talked about the importance of a professional design for your website. A good design will encourage Brides and Grooms to trust your website and eventually buy your services.

However, there is no point in having a great looking website if when someone visits there is no content.

What do I mean by content? Content is the meat of your website, the filling of your wedding cake. Content is what a visitor comes to see. When a Bride visits your website she wants something and you have to give it to her or she will leave and go somewhere else.

Let’s take a wedding photographer as an example. What content is a Bride or Groom looking for when they visit a wedding photographer’s website?

• examples of their photographs (maybe a gallery)
• a breakdown of the packages on offer along with prices
• previous client’s testimonials
• information about the photographer themselves
• the equipment used by the photographer
• contact details

This is all content that should be present on a wedding photographer’s website. Without any of the above, a visitor would leave and go to a competitor. You need to give a Bride what she is looking for. Satisfy your customer’s needs.

Here are a few self assessment questions to help YOU improve your website’s content!

Ask Yourself This…

Is your website’s content created to display the depth of what is offered?
You need to open up. Give your visitors everything they are looking for. If you offer something, it should be on your website. Don’t hide anything.

Does your content easily satisfy the question of ‘how can this help with my dream wedding’?
Put yourself in a Bride’s shoes. She wants a perfect wedding and you need to provide a perfect service.

Is your content truly QUALITY content?
Pay attention to basic grammar, spelling, and other often seen mistakes like being overly wordy, too technical, or dreary, long paragraphs.

Can you quickly, and with great ease, skim and understand the content?
Many Brides visiting your site will be in a rush. Remember, couples may be doing their wedding planning in their spare time.

A Bride may visit your site in her lunchtime and she may have your competitor’s sites to visit as well as yours. You need to provide her with the information she needs quickly.

Will the Bride easily see plentiful reasons to keep reading your content, and want to go deeper into your site?
Give visitors to an incentive to stick around and see more of your content. Place ‘Calls to Action’ in relevant places on your site e.g. “Click Here to View Examples of My Work“

What about your keywords, and keyword phrases?
Does the content use them often, yet skilfully, so as not to be obvious and detract from the content?

Keywords are very important, as they are a big factor in bringing a Bride from a search engine to your site. I will be talking about keywords and SEO very soon on this blog.

Do you use any fancy backgrounds, or elaborate, ‘pretty’ fonts? If you use any whatsoever, do any of them make it hard to read your content?
Although design is important it should not prevent your content from being found or from being read. Strike a balance between good content and good design.

Does your content link to other relevant pages?
Make it easy for visitors to find the content on your site. Create as few frustrations to your visitors as possible. If a Bride can’t find what she is looking for, she will leave immediately.

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Design
Part 3 - Content