What’s better for your website: More Written Content or Better Graphics?

If you are using the Internet to promote a product or to sell a service that’s a good question.

It’s a question your web designer may answer with, “let’s have a website with lots of Flash animation. Let’s have a template with scene changes that synchronize with different audio files. Let’s have a talking head whose eyes move in response to the mouse. Let’s make your site a multi-media experience that will grab your visitors from the opening scene.”

Good idea? Well apart from the 5 minutes your site will take to download, I don’t think so.

And that’s not only because I’m a web content writer with a left hemisphere challenged brain. Apparently most Internet users, if recent surveys are to be believed, don’t agree either. These surveys show that over 86 percent of first time site visitors want the type of information that only the written word can provide. When these first time visitors have used keyword searches to find your site, this figure shoots up to more than 96 percent.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg address”

I don’t know who wrote that----as a writer I wish I had---but it’s very perceptive. It’s perceptive because it challenges accepted wisdom, something that most successful business people do regularly.  And it is probably the answer you should give to your web designer when he says, “let’s have lots of Flash animation, complex graphics and audio files.”

That or, “use Flash, lose cash.” An audio file that plays automatically, one that that nobody can find the stop button for, is very annoying to most people. I don’t have any researched proof for that, just a lot of aggravating experiences that had me wanting to throw my laptop out of a window.

OK, you know my position. Content is king for commercial websites. Now the question is----

WHAT WRITTEN CONTENT WORKS BEST?

When I say written content, I’m not thinking of what I call “filler” pages or ‘spider food” pages. Filler pages are informative and are often available from the public domain. They provide your visitors with pertinent facts and help establish “bricks and mortar credibility for your virtual reality.” But that’s not the sort of content I’m talking about.

Let me explain.

If you are a golfer you will have heard the saying, “drive for show, chip and putt for dough.” Well your, “Home Page,”  “About Us” pages, your “Our Services” pages and other landing pages are your putting. Those pages are the ones that must answer your first time visitor’s questions, or convince them that the information is right here at your website.

Your portal pages must inspire visitors to suspend their 29 second attention span for, well, longer than 29 seconds. They must motivate visitors to click one of your site’s navigation-button prompts, not the dreaded “Back” prompt on the tool bar.

Even the written content for your “FAQ” pages and “Contact Us” page needs to be considered if you want to motivate your visitors to become more than a bounce stat on your traffic reporot. Check the statistics and you’ll find leakage at every point in your website’s sales cycle.

The first job of good web copy is to make your visitors keep reading: to have them use the prompts in the way that you envisaged: to make them put your URL into their favorites menu.

And that all starts with better written content. Content that firstly informs then inspires visitors to action.

Go to http://www.webinteractiveconsulting.com/business-writer.html for more information about how a good writer can transform lazy websites into lead machines while hoisting your rankings up the search engine ladder.

Web Interactive Consulting