10 Oct Tying Together Web Design and Content Marketing
It’s not as difficult anymore to think about web design and content marketing as a conglomeration of parts or techniques that make up the whole website as a marketing tool. Changes in marketing over the past few years have really delivered some clear guidelines and goals that we as marketers and business owners should trust as the new way to do business online as they deliver real value to your visitors and make it easier to establish trusting relationships between your visitors and your business. They also help out a lot with search engine optimization and ranking, as SEO starts to deliver on the promise to deliver better value to web users.
Information Is The Heart Of Your Website
As a complete abstraction of information, how your visitors react and interact with the website is the heart of your digital marketing. Until you take this to heart, the connection with your prospects visitors and customers will not ring true and will not deliver the best returns on investment for your digital marketing spend.
It is fairly simple when we think about a blog article to focus on visitor interaction. Make it entertaining, make it useful, make it valuable. When writing a blog, you are telling a story and if you think about the information or the takeaway that you need a particular audience to focus on when they read the article you will attract better visitors more visitors and deliver more value to your prospects and visitors.
Even on product and service pages think about the content that you are delivering and the potential value to your prospects. How can you change your content to both attract and convert visitors into leads? Put yourself into the mindset of your visitors. What drives them? What would make them listen to you? What would make them return for more?
I think a quote by Jerry Seinfeld hits the mark fairly closely on this issue of directing visitors through content. “This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them.”
Control The Visitor’s Eye
When you take on web design, the first thoughts and the process should be all about directing your visitors through your page to the most valuable content for that visitor. Use your colors, style elements, and information to easily direct their eye around the page in a quick motion. Keep the object groupings fairly bold and make the final destination obvious and the value easily discernible for web design visitors.
- Always remember that the top left corner gets the attention first.
- Keep in mind research such as the Gutenberg Diagram that describes how the eye will move through text heavy content naturally when you lay out your elements on the page.
- Use the lower right terminal area for most Calls To Action as it will be the most natural place for your visitors to see the point.
- Content is usually read in a F Pattern. Top left gets the most attention, with branching right patterns as the eye goes down the page.
- Increase font size at the top of pages to give more importance to your initial value add.
- Left side of the page gets more attention than the right. Menus are more effective in that placement.
- You have 2.6 seconds of scanning before users will fixate on a certain section.
- First impressions are formed in 0.2 seconds.
Consistency and Ease of Use
One of the biggest parts of keeping your visitors on the website is making everything consistent and easy-to-use. It may not be the best course of action to completely reimagine a user interface as there are many thousands of hours of research and development that have determined the best way to display and interact with your visitors. Make small changes to expected website behavior, but always keep the past in mind as a basis for your user interface design.
Menus should never change from page to page to avoid losing website users. Keep your calls to action in the same general area as you move throughout the website to keep them in your visitors’ minds.
Search Engine Optimization As A Byproduct Of Good Content
With the coming of age of Penguin and Panda, along with the dozen or so other major parts of the Google algorithms, we are finally to a point where value to the visitor drives SEO and search engine rankings.
Search engines are looking at how interesting and how valuable your content is to your visitors. Every time a visitor searches for your keywords in a search engine listing the engine is measuring which listing is being clicked, how long a visitor stays on your content, and where they end up after they leave your site. By focusing on value and interest we can reach an equilibrium where bounce rate and time on site are improved, which will dramatically improve how the search engines will rank your website pages.
The biggest issue that I have with the new ways that search engines rank websites is that newcomers to the SEO party may have to fight for months before they reach their audiences, and you might have to rely more on Pay Per Click advertising during your first years in business (Which is probably a big part of why Search Engines are built this way).
Conclusion
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
Imagine what they are searching for and how to fix their problems.
By controlling the eye and path of your users throughout the website and keeping they’re experienced consistent throughout we can remarkably improve their experience with your brand.
But at the base of it, the value and how your visitors perceive your content is the new norm for search engine optimization and for user experience.