Top Five Content Mistakes to Avoid
Sunday, August 10th, 2008Don’t be just a pretty face — make sure your site content is free of these common blunders
For the past several years, I’ve studied the Web and worked on a wide range of Web projects. This experience has only strengthened the initial conviction which led me to this field: Content is ultimately the most important aspect of any Web site.
Here’s what I mean: You can have the best site design, the slickest programming, the most intuitive online shopping cart or discussion forum… However, if you’re not communicating something that’s unique, valuable, and coherent, all of those other achievements won’t help much.
Content is truly what makes or breaks a site – from product photos and descriptions in online stores, to online novels, to your local soccer team’s Web site. Fortunately, great content usually is fairly inexpensive to produce (except for multimedia or research-intensive projects).
True, most Web content still ranges from mediocre to awful – but that can work to your advantage! Since the most important content errors that are fairly simple to avoid or fix, it’s easy to create a site that stands out favorably.
If you avoid the following five basic mistakes, your Web content probably will be pretty good – or even great!
· Mistake #1: Lack of a clear and unique purpose. Too often, people create Web sites simply to have "a presence" on the Web – but a presence is not a purpose. However, if your site offers something that no other Web site offers, that makes it more attractive to your online audience as well as to yourself (meaning that you probably won’t lose interest in the project). So sit down and ask yourself:
· "Why am I creating this site?"
· "Why would people want to visit my site?"
· "What makes my site uniquely interesting or valuable?"
…Make sure your answers are as specific as possible. Keep trying out different answers until you find the ones that are most compelling to you – they’ll immediately resonate, and you’ll find yourself getting really excited about working on your Web site.
Often finding the right answers is a matter of shifting or narrowing your focus. For instance, rather than saying your personal site is "all about you," why not focus on some particularly interesting aspect of yourself – such as your years of experience with breeding Great Danes, or your dry Midwestern sense of humor?
Once you’ve identified your site’s purpose, make that purpose clear to your audience. That can affect everything from the title ("Joe’s Great Dane site" rather than "Joe’s site") to the choice and organization of content. Also, demonstrate what makes your site unique – even if it’s only your own unique viewpoint on life. Give people a solid reason to visit your site.
· Mistake #2: Not knowing your audience. What makes the Web particularly exciting is its interactive nature – people can check out what you’ve created, and they may discuss it or link to it. Certainly, your Web site should please and interest you. However, if you only aim to please yourself, you probably won’t attract much of an audience. That makes it more likely that you’ll become bored or discouraged with your site.
Figure out which groups of people you most wish to reach out to with your Web site. Then, imagine that you’re looking through their eyes. What aspects of the topic of your site would probably interest them most? What would they probably not care about at all? How do these people think, and what opinions or preconceptions might they hold? The more successfully you can reflect your audience’s perspective in your site, the greater your chances of success.
Reflecting your audience’s perspective is the antidote to another common content mistake I’ve frequently railed against: fluff (content intended primarily to persuade, rather than inform).
· Mistake #3: Disorganization. It’s common for Web sites devolve into sprawling, chaotic jumbles of loosely related content. If your site has a clear and unique purpose, and if you understand the audience you’re trying to reach, then organizing your content becomes a fairly simple matter. Let your audience’s perspective and your goals dictate how you will categorize and prioritize your information. Keep the organization of your content (which translates into the structure of your site) as simple as possible. If you must go off in an entirely new direction, it may be wise to launch a new Web site dedicated to that other purpose.
· Mistake #4: Lack of dates. One problem with using the Web is that it’s often difficult to tell how old a Web site or page is, unless that’s clearly stated. Make sure every Web page and key piece of information has a date associated with it. (At least the year, but also the month and day if possible.)
"Cobwebs" (abandoned sites) are the bane of the Web, since they cause a great deal of confusion. This is not to say that old content has no value. In fact, both fresh and archived content can offer significant value. However, the nature of that value depends in part on the age of the content. If your audience can’t tell when your content was created or last updated, then they won’t really know what they’re seeing, so they can’t really tell how valuable it is for their purposes.
If you can’t take the time to go back and update your content, then presenting the date lets the audience know whether your content is current – and from that they’ll draw their own conclusions. A good strategy is to review the key pages on your site at least every six months, and then update the "last updated" date notice for each page.
· Mistake #5: Lack of editing. Much of the content I see on the Web looks like a first draft. That is, the creator never took the time to prune away items that really shouldn’t be there, or to smooth transitions between points or sections, or to consider how pictures and text could best complement each other, etc.
Never publish your first draft. Always take the time to look over your content with fresh eyes so you can find its weak spots – or have someone you trust review it for you, if you don’t feel you can edit your own work well. As you become more experienced with creating online content, your first drafts will get consistently better. However, even the most experienced content creators need editing. Think of editing as a safety valve that can prevent embarrassing errors, lack of clarity or coherence, and missed opportunities.
…Are there other kinds of mistakes you can make with your Web content? Certainly. You can include inappropriate or poorly crafted links. You can write titles or subheads that aren’t intuitive. You can fill your Web pages with meaningless "fluff." And on, and on…
However, in my experience, if you pay close attention to avoiding the top five errors I’ve listed above, you’ll end up with inherently valuable content that may only require further refinement – not something that’s so useless or off-target that it must be completely overhauled.
