Your website content

Home page

Your Home page should quickly convey what it is that your company does and why people should deal with you. Keep it brief and to the point, save the detail for other pages.

Contact page

We recommend that your contact details are at the foot of every page, but it is also a very good idea to have a separate Contact page with your full address, telephone, fax, email and a contact form. This makes it very clear that you do indeed want to be contacted, and it makes it easy for customers to contact you by the means they prefer.

About page

An About page is the conventional place to give visitors a "feel" for your company, and the style should reflect the image of your business that you want to convey. This is the place to put background information, like when the company started, what your values are, who the important people are in your business etc..

Writing style

People dislike reading on-screen, so keep your content as brief as possible. My advice is to write your copy, then come back the next day with the aim of reducing the number of words by 50% while still maintaining the meaning.

The web is no place for fancy prose, use short words where possible. Use short sentances. Break the text into paragraphs. Use headings to make it easy for people to scan the page for the content they want.

Avoid jargon

Avoid "industry jargon" that your customers may not be familiar with. This is important. The most effective way to do this is to ask someone outside of your industry to read your copy. When they say "what does that mean" re-word the phrase into plain English.

Example - at 123Live we used to refer to "e-commerce". We know what we mean by the term, but it confused our customers, so now we talk about "allowing customers to order products by credit card from your website".

Clear menus

Menus are the links on the side or top of your web pages taht link to other pages in an organised way.

Make the menus on your website unambiguous. People are far more likely to click a link that is very explicit rather than cryptic.