Good Content Pays!

Traffic to a site can be a blessing or a curse. Visitors who find what they are looking
for, are engaged in what the site offers, and/or come away with a positive
impression become the site owner’s best allies and customers. But lead a visitor to
believe that they will find what they are looking for and then not provide on your
promise and you will find yourself being stabbed in the back repeatedly by people
you will never know. As discussed in another article, “What Are the Benefits of Good
Design on the Web?” the task of the site owner is not simply to ask all the right
questions and make sure the designer interprets the answers correctly. Just as
challenging is the need for the correct content—content that is largely dictated by
the answers to the same questions so important to good design: Who are the
visitors? What are they looking for? What is their situation, are they rushed? Are they
knowledgeable? Are they looking for opinions or facts? Are they the kind of prospect
the site owner is looking for?

Much is made of the importance of “fresh” content, but I posit that the right content
is ageless if it’s still relevant to the audience it’s targeted toward and the business
objectives continue to be met. A constant infusion of ill-aimed content on top of
bad or incorrect content is no answer to the challenge of gaining and keeping
customers. So the question is, “What’s the right content?” As Michael Gerber states
in his must-read book, E-Myth Revisited, “It is in the understanding of value, as it
impacts every person with whom your business comes into contact, that every
extraordinary business lives.” Deep knowledge of your customers will define your
entire business and make clear the boundaries of your content.

Content development is often a missed opportunity for creativity. Here a team can
and should gather to read and digest what the psychographics profiles indicate the
interests and motivators of the audiences are. As a hedge against myopia, your
team should include one or more from outside your company or immediate
colleagues. The same scenarios that influence the designers should be the
frameworks for role-playing within the content team.

No matter the intent of the site – whether e-commerce, private intranet, public
promotion, nonprofit research, or secure account management – the measurement
of success, the determinant of how much the site is returning on the owner’s
investment, is found in the server logs. They tell the story of the visitor’s travels
through the site. If the content is good, visitors will linger when they find content
that resonates with who they are and their situation. If they stay less than a minute,
going to another site from the first page they land on, you are looking at either a
visitor who realized they were not looking for what you were offering, or a visitor
who was turned off by the content they perused in those first 30 seconds. Good
content engages; good content pays!

Stephen Dill

SRD InterActive

srd@srdinteractive.com

www.srdinteractive.com

Stephen Dill is a seasoned marketer with expertise in the development and use of
interactive channels and their integration with traditional marketing channels.
Stephen has held leadership and/or consulting positions in small companies,
Fortune 500 companies and the military. He has extensive experience in
conceptualizing and articulating new concepts, organizing teams and managing
projects through to completion.

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