How Long Should it Take You to Write Content for Your Website?

This is a question many people ponder over when it comes to writing content for their sites. It doesn’t matter whether it is a blog post, an article, a web page or anything in between. Should it take fifteen minutes, an hour, two days or anything else?

In truth there is no firm answer to this question. In fact the question itself should be looked at from an entirely different angle. How long should it take to write worthwhile, engaging and strong content for your website that is designed to attract the very audience you are targeting?

Now there is a good question. And it is a question that really gets to the bottom of the whole idea of writing good content. You might find you can write a 400 word blog post in about five minutes, if you’ve thought of the idea for a while and it is already planned out in your mind. Sometimes they just flow and when this happens your content can be written in next to no time and it will still be worthwhile and engaging for your audience.

On other occasions it might take much longer to write a piece of the same length. You might have some research to do to beef it up, or it might simply take some time to find the right words to get across whatever it is you want to say.

Of course the other option is to get someone else – an expert writer – to create the content for you. They may be able to get things done faster than you would, simply because they have a routine they stick to every single day. In this case you could get the content you want faster than you would be able to if you were to write it on your own. You can still tweak it when you receive it if you wish, just to get your own voice in there to a greater degree.

But in any case you can see that it is impossible to set a certain length of time for creating good strong content.

Creativity and Its Role in Your Business

How important would you say creativity is when it comes to developing your business? Would you say it is the most important aspect of all, the tool that enables you to stand out among the crowd of competitors who are jostling you at every opportunity? Or would you say it doesn’t really have much bearing on what you do from day to day?

In truth, creativity is very important. Without it your business will eventually become stagnant. Just imagine what many websites would look like if they were still using the same design they started out with. In the case of some of the oldest online properties, they’d look very antiquated indeed.

Hence there is a real need to move ahead and be creative with every single day that passes. Think about creativity in all its forms and consider whether you are applying it to your own business. How long have you had that same old business card? Does your business look as if it is stuck in the past? Is your website due for an overhaul to make it look better, more modern and more dynamic?

Creativity doesn’t just keep your business looking and feeling fresh. It can spark a whole new direction to go in. Many of the businesses that go under and disappear completely are those that fail to move with the times. This can be avoidable in many cases, which is another reason why you should embrace creativity as much as you can.

Of course you don’t need to do all this on your own. Sometimes you might feel you need assistance from experts in the field to get the job done. You don’t need to be able to create a new website from scratch. Providing you have an idea of where you want to go with it, you can hire someone else to do it on your behalf. Sometimes it is a combination of ideas from you and skills from someone else that get the best results, so don’t be afraid to seek out help and advice from elsewhere.

What Should You Do If You Can’t Get Visitors?

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much preparation you put into creating a website or blog and getting traffic to it. Whatever you do there are times when you simply can’t seem to get the visitors you want.

Some people simply give up when they get to this stage. But this is the point where you need to remember that not everything is easy to achieve. Very few websites get loads of traffic right from the start. Very often it is a gradual curve – a learning curve if you will – that moves up gradually and gains speed as it goes along. If you have unwittingly fallen into the ‘build it and they will come’ group of people, don’t worry. There are ways to generate fresh traffic to any website, regardless of how bad things look at the moment.

The best place to start is to consider whether your website is to blame. All websites have to be search engine friendly as well as friendly to the visitors you want to attract. If you have made it difficult for the search engines to find and index all your pages, there is less chance of turning up in their results.

Of course a lot of this is down to the content you have to add to your site as well. Are you adding content regularly enough? It should go without saying that a site with ten pages has far less chance of being found than a site with two hundred pages. The more pages you have, the more chance there is of being ranked for each one. You can build your site over time instead of adding everything in one hit of course, but it’s a target worth shooting for.

Sometimes trying to fix a struggling website can be too difficult to manage. It can be hard to know where to begin, let alone what to do about it. This is why many people opt to get professional assistance to boost their site up to where they want it to be. This might be something worth thinking about.

We Don’t All Surf the Net on Computers Anymore

Recent years have seen an explosion in the number of smart phones in use in the UK and beyond. More of us are also using devices like iPads to get online without having to resort to switching on our computers to do so.

This means that your website has to be able to cope with being seen in different ways on different devices. There is a very real chance that a significant percentage of your website visitors are finding your site via a mobile phone or some other device – namely something that doesn’t have a large screen. If this is the case, you will lose out on that traffic if your website is not able to be easily viewed on such devices.

So when you get a new website for your business, one of the most important things to remember is to ensure everyone can see it properly. If you get 1,000 visitors a day and 40% of those find your site via a smart phone surfing session, that’s a potential 400 people you could lose as future customers. Of course you could have a mobile version of your website as well. If you do and you are ready to cater for this ever increasing audience as well as those who find you in the more traditional way, you won’t have to worry. You will also be streets ahead of your competition if they happen to be dragging their heels in providing a mobile version of their site for people to find.

It is certainly not wise to delay the task of finding customers in this way on these devices. When you realise it could make a difference to your bottom line, you’ll see that exploring all the different ways people surf the net and how you can reach more of them is incredibly important.

Fortunately it isn’t something you have to worry about if you hire a professional web design team like Ratio7 to do the work for you. As you can see, it could be an investment that lets you reach even more people.

Old and Tired Web Designs Hinder Your Business Progress

If you have stuck with the same website design through thick and thin, the chances are pretty good that you might be getting tired with it. And if you are getting tired of it you can be sure your web visitors will be as well.

The trick is to know when it is time to change and renew things for the better. Things change and advance quickly online and this means you could end up with an old web design sooner than you might think. If you have had the same design for a while now, it might be worth consulting a professional designer to see if you could revamp your website. You may well find you can revamp your whole business as well.

Of course you may not be sure if you have reached the point where your old design is old enough to get rid of. But if you consult with a professional designer you can get some input as to whether you are able to produce something new, modern and dynamic to better represent your business in the future.

The truth is that old and tired designs will harm your business more than anything else. If someone comes across your website and it looks very basic and old, they might be forgiven for wondering whether anyone is still running it, or whether it has been forgotten about and consigned to the scrapheap. This is not the kind of opinion you want people to form, so if you are ready to make the most of your website it might be time to give it a makeover.

Now some people immediately think of the cost of doing this and how it might affect them. But normally you will bring in more business as a result of having a fresh new website and design – especially if you promote the changes ahead of time and when they take place. So remember what you are getting here and how much it might be worth to you in the future. This is the most convincing reason there is to get a new web design.

We’re Talking Website Content

In February’s edition of the Red Room we are talking website content and plenty of it. Helen talks us through the advantages of adding timely content to your website and why we shouldn’t be scared of making videos for your site. Grab a latte and a comfy chair and enjoy.

Do You Really Need a Huge Website?

If you’re thinking about setting up a new website – regardless of what the reason might be for doing so – you might be thinking about size. Many websites are laden down with pages, sections, blogs and much more besides. But does this mean all websites should be built in this way?

Not at all; in fact it is far more likely that some sites would function just as well (perhaps even better) if they had just a few pages of information to offer. Too many pages can sometimes bloat out a site unnecessarily, making it large and cumbersome for no good reason.

This is why it is usually best to start with an idea of what you want to achieve with your site. If you have a clear plan you will be able to decide whether you need such a big site after all. For example if you run a cake decorating business that offers countless different designs for all kinds of occasions, it makes sense that you would need a large site. But if you have just one product to sell, you might be guilty of overload if you create a huge site around it. In a sense it actually confuses the customer because there is too much information for them to digest when they visit your site. If they cannot find what they want within a few moments of arriving on your site, they might leave without worrying about searching any longer. You couldn’t blame them.

So don’t make any assumptions when it comes to how many pages your new website needs. Work on some examples. Look for reasons to have a specific number of pages. Will your site need to grow in future or will it be just fine with a smaller number of pages – perhaps only two or three?

The more you learn about what your new site could look like, the easier it will be to work out what size site you will need. You can then press ahead with confidence so you stand a far better chance of getting the right site for the right purpose.

If you would like some advice or help on choosing the right size website, please get in touch. Our dedicated web design and development team would be happy to help.

Ensuring Your Website Visitors Meet Your Desires

Some people think all they need to do is to whack up a website and wait for the customers to come rolling in. Of course in reality things are very different. You might get some if you apply a casual approach to creating a website, but you won’t get as many as you would from a more targeted approach.

The best websites are dynamic, subtle and formulaic (in the nicest possible way). They have a purpose. It could be to get people to sign up for a free newsletter, so they can be marketed to at a later date. It could be to sell a particular product or line of products. But if the website doesn’t have a specific goal in mind it is more than likely that the results the webmaster gets won’t be what they would like.

This is why professional web design is so important. Few webmasters who design their own sites will start by asking themselves these questions: “What do I want to achieve with this site? What is my goal?” Professional web designers must have the answers to these questions if they are going to create a site that will achieve its purpose – one that will have a purpose in the first place.

For instance you may not want to sell anything directly through your website. You may simply want to provide information on a specific niche topic and to get people to sign up for a free newsletter to receive more information on a regular basis. Many marketers and webmasters will testify that the money really can be in the list if the list is big enough to generate the income they need.

The point is that any old website just won’t do. This is the face of your business and if you don’t know how it should look, you can’t expect to get the results you really want. Many people rush into getting their websites up and running. But in truth if you spend a little longer making sure you know your focus you’ll reap better rewards in the end.

Don’t Be Scared of Video

It’s amazing how many webmasters shy away from making videos for their websites. The normal way for many of them to get in touch with their readers is to write a blog post or an article. This is great for SEO and it provides content that the spiders can crawl to index for the search engines.

But it doesn’t tell the whole story and it doesn’t appeal to everyone. We don’t all have the time or the inclination to sit and read an entire blog post. And sometimes it’s nice to see just who is writing this particular blog or website.

This is where the power of the video comes in. Video creates a connection between the reader and the presenter that simply isn’t there in the average blog post or article. The best approach used by some people is to record a video and then provide a shorter post underneath it that goes over the content given in the video. This works well because people then have a choice of which type of content to look at or read. Some will do both.

But people do have a fear of making videos. They worry over their appearance or whether people will enjoy them or not. But here’s the thing – it is incredibly important not to worry about appearance. Obviously you want to look reasonably neat and tidy, but you’ll do that anyway. The important thing is to actually get on your computer and to make your video. People aren’t going to tune in to see what you look like. They’re going to tune in to see what you have to say. The content of your video is far more important than what you look like. Even in the world of video presentations, content is still king.

So if you haven’t yet added any videos to your website, think about making the change and doing it now. It could be one of the best things you ever do, and it might just open your site up to a whole new audience. You’ve nothing to lose by trying.

The Advantages of Adding Timely Content to Your Website

You probably already know how important it is to add content to your website on a regular basis. This is one of the most important ways to make sure your website ranks higher in the search engines. A regularly updated site is a fresh site with fresh content to share with its readers. It is very likely therefore to rank higher than a site that isn’t updated at all.

But there are different types of content that can be added to a site. Most people opt for evergreen content – content that will always be relevant no matter when people read it. For example if you have a website about SEO, you’ll probably include some of the basics about good SEO practice that will always be relevant, even in several years time.

However while evergreen content has its place, don’t overlook timely content. This is newsworthy content that is relevant to now. This traditionally does well initially but then drops away as it is no longer news. You can probably see why you should add this to your plans to consistently update your website, because it can bring in good short term traffic for you as well.

The point is that if someone visits your site because they have found a link to a newsworthy topic, they might read it and then stay to see what else they can find. So you can use timely content to find new readers and to keep them coming back for more in the future.

The trick is to get the balance right between newsworthy, timely content and the evergreen content that people love so much. In a sense you’re giving people two different ways to find your website. But both types of people are likely to stay and read more once they are there, so you are improving your chances of finding more traffic.

If you don’t already provide timely content on your website, now is the time to do so. Make sure you appeal to as wide a readership as possible and see what happens.