Effective, engaging, exciting copy is imperative for a web site to succeed. But so often, when web strategies are planned, the content is treated as an afterthought.
This great article on Web Designer Depot talks about things that clients should know when beginning to work with a web firm. Number 5 in this posting is “Content is King.”
From the entry:
“Most clients fully accept that content is king, yet few are willing to spend money on ensuring its quality…
“In my experience, clients underestimate the time involved in producing copy for the web and resort to copying and pasting from a wide variety of offline printed material. This leads to Frankenstein copy, using a mix of styles that are often entirely inappropriate for the web.”
This insight is spot-on. Well-written web copy is not the same as well-written copy for print brochures or a letter campaign. Web writing has specific needs and specific opportunities inherent to the medium. An experienced web writer will understand these intricacies and create web copy that enhances a website and makes it work better.
If the copy on a web page is ho-hum, not only is the copy not working hard for the owner, it may even be a deterrent. The web is full of other pages, and any site will lose a visitor pretty quickly if all the pieces of the puzzle aren’t in place.
The site has to work properly, and be easily navigable. It has to be visually attractive, and interactive. And it has to be written in a way that informs and entertains readers, and keeps them from clicking away.
So hire an experienced, web-savvy writer to create your content for you—just as you would hire someone to design and program your site. Don’t neglect your content.
