You did your homework. You got recommendations from friends and colleagues. You’ve had the all important first meeting and forked over a large wad of cash to a website designer… so why don’t you have a website yet?
Many business owners don’t realize that when you hire a website designer to create a masterpiece that will showcase your business and bring hordes of potential customers to your door, they don’t write the content.
I like to use a house analogy. Would you expect the construction crew to not only build your house, but furnish it, decorate it, and select frames for the pictures of your precious Pekingese Petunia?
Doubtful.
It’s more likely that you’d hire the construction crew to do what they do best, and then either furnish the house yourself or hire an interior designer to decorate it properly for you.
Here’s where the analogy ends: You have to provide the furnishings for your home before the frame is built. (Yes, your Persian rug would get rained on. That’s why I’m abandoning the analogy.)
A good website designer wants to see what content is going onto the site before they start building it. In fact, the entire design of your site should be driven by the content.
This gives you three options:
1) Take time away from your business to slap together some sentences about what you do, and pull your hair out stressing over every word and punctuation mark. Unfortunately, your content will likely be unimaginative and may not properly express your uniqueness. This is because you’re too close to it. You already know what you do, and it’s human nature to expect others to know it as well.
2) Put “website content” on your to-do list and spend the next 6 months pushing it to the next day while grumbling that your website designer isn’t working on your site.
3) Hire a content writer. Send them information on your business and answer a few questions, and then get back to building your empire. Your content writer can work alongside the web designer to tell the story that will best illustrate what makes your business special. As the website is built, your content writer can tailor the material to fit the design. They will work together to create a seamless product that puts your business in the best light possible.
Visitors to your site come for the content, not the design. They want to know what you do, why you do it, and most importantly, how you can make their life easier. They want answers to their questions, not just pretty pictures and graphics to look at.
Creating a website is an investment in your business and your future. While the design and functionality are important, without persuasive content, you’ll just find yourself sitting in an empty house.
If you’re in the process of building your website now, or are looking to revamp a stale site, contact me at (702)885-4309 and let’s discuss how to make your content shine.
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