Undeniably, planning website content can be a daunting task. The first thought is often to impress your audience with a sleek website design, but at this critical first impression stage information flow and navigation can be much more vital. Your website architecture and its ease of use to the user can yield great benefits and attract visitors who engage with your business. That ultimately leads to more trust, higher conversion rates, more leads and more sales.
Here are five actionable steps that you can implement to achieve a great user experience:
1 – Identify target keywords
To ensure that you drive the right traffic to your website, by which we mean the traffic you want to visit and who are looking for your products or services, you must identify the optimum keywords for your field. Looking at the level of competition, search volume and achievability will help you to understand what is achievable in the short and longer-term. In other words, what is the audience typing into search engines to find your business? Keyword research tools are a great way to help you find the right target keywords for your business.
2 – Categorise the keywords
Segmenting the keyword research into categories, highlighting different subsets of your products, services, or information that your potential customers may find helpful will help you to highlight areas to work on. These will then help you produce relevant content and give you a direction to start to form your website structure. Think about the flow of information here with the visitor experience in mind and what you want them to see and know about your business along the way. Also, think about what subpages may come in handy for additional information for the more curious.
3 – Develop your website content site map/architecture
After that, you are ready to build the architecture of your website (site map creation). A site map is a hierarchical representation of your site and all of its levels and pages. You have already started this process by mapping your keywords into logical categories which may then easily fall into pages in that site map. Develop the rest of the site structure and include information your target audience wants to see and that you are keen to share. That may include company information and specific product data. Research has identified that a flatter, less complex site will often work best at converting as it will take fewer clicks to get to the deepest level.
4 – Wireframe the pages
Next, start to develop a layout or wireframe for each page within your new website. A wireframe is a simple representation of the content and navigation for a page on your site and it shows the expected content and functionality of a page. Just remember that it does not represent the design of your website, only the flow of information and what the visitor should expect to see on the page. It can be as simple as a sketch on a notepad but getting something started will help you to understand how the page will work. For more on wireframing, check out HubSpot’s blog for an in-depth description.
5 – Planning website content
Once you know what pages you will have on the site, from your sitemap, and how it will work within that structure, your wireframe you can plan the content for each page. You should ensure the content uses your target keywords but not in a way that is unnatural or makes the reader feel uncomfortable reading it. As a result, that will make the page relevant to your searching audience for the identified keyword. Visitors will know when they see your site that they have landed in the right place, and your planned navigation will in turn help with on-page conversion for that customer journey.
Summary
In conclusion, planning website content requires careful thought, research and analysis, which are essential for the success of your website. Ultimately, creating a good, relevant copy in a well-defined structure that is highly relevant to your business will help you rank better on search engines for proven searched-for terms and get into the mindset of your audience to anticipate their needs. The aim of any website is for visitors to arrive and find relevant, easily accessible content presented in a logical order. If this is done well it will encourage conversions more readily, whether a conversion is simply to contact you or to complete a sale online.
if you would like some help or support in making sure your new website has well-planned architecture built with your actively searching audience in mind, get in touch with us and we will take the time to get to know you and your business well so that we can help you to achieve your website goals.