So, recently, a client asked me to listen to a
brainstorming session they had had and tease out information they could use as
content on their website. Prior to this day, I had never paid any attention to
content creation but had experienced it as a consumer on websites I visit. Some
content I found helpful, others not so much, and others even frustrating.
This got me thinking: what makes for good
content on a website? So I did a bit of research, and came across content
strategy. This means that the content should assist an organisation to achieve its
long term goals. It's not just about coming up with content for the sake of
content, or so that people can say you have a website! The content purpose is
twofold: 1. to meet business objectives and 2. to meet user expectations.
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According to the foremost thought leaders in
content strategy, CEO and founder of Brain Traffic Kistrina Halvorson, and
co-founder of Dialog Studios Melissa Rach, content strategy comprises content
components as well as people components, but I will focus on the content
components here, specifically content substance, i.e. what
messages does content need to communicate to our audience?
But what is good content? Without getting too
academic, according to some gurus in this area- Chakraboty et al (2015), there
are 3 dimensions to content which are:
1 1. Informativeness- the ability of a web site to
make information available,
2 2. Usability of information- users perceived
ability to utilise content i.e. reduces consumers’ search costs by helping to
access the information available on a website more efficiently
3 3. Quality of information- the quality of the
content in a website and the suitability of the content from a user’s
perspective.
So good content should meet these dimensions. Getting
this information was an aha! moment for me. It shed light on why I enjoyed
visiting some websites and found some very frustrating. It had all to do with
the purpose the content on those websites was meant to fulfil, and whether the
content met the 3 dimensions of content. The ones I hated failed to meet my
expectations which are generally to find useful actionable information.
I don't know about you, but I hate company websites that sell products but do not display the prices of those goods, and instead invite you to contact them for a price!!! Like, what the hell! If I wanted to call you and ask for a price, I would not have wasted my time browsing your website. These websites rank poorly on the usability of information. Inevitably, this leads to very poor user experience. Depending on the product they are selling, they could lose a potential buyer to a competitor whose prices are easily accessible. I was looking to buy a car recently and found the Toyota website content usability on point. It reduced my search costs by ensuring that the information I needed, in this case, car prices, was easily accessible. Its competitors, on the other hand, required that I call them for a price, which I did begrudgingly as I need to find a car within my budget.
I also hate websites whose content is not properly laid out. Have you been on a website where you keep scrolling down and new information keeps appearing and there seems to be no end to the stream of information, yet you still cannot find what you are looking for? It’s almost as if you are reading a 100-page word document but on a webpage! That is a poor quality layout of the webpage. One wonders why such information could not be curated into various pages on the website.
I don't know about you, but I hate company websites that sell products but do not display the prices of those goods, and instead invite you to contact them for a price!!! Like, what the hell! If I wanted to call you and ask for a price, I would not have wasted my time browsing your website. These websites rank poorly on the usability of information. Inevitably, this leads to very poor user experience. Depending on the product they are selling, they could lose a potential buyer to a competitor whose prices are easily accessible. I was looking to buy a car recently and found the Toyota website content usability on point. It reduced my search costs by ensuring that the information I needed, in this case, car prices, was easily accessible. Its competitors, on the other hand, required that I call them for a price, which I did begrudgingly as I need to find a car within my budget.
I also hate websites whose content is not properly laid out. Have you been on a website where you keep scrolling down and new information keeps appearing and there seems to be no end to the stream of information, yet you still cannot find what you are looking for? It’s almost as if you are reading a 100-page word document but on a webpage! That is a poor quality layout of the webpage. One wonders why such information could not be curated into various pages on the website.
Anyway, a seemingly simple task got me
researching content strategy and what makes for good content and marrying it to
my own experiences with content. What has been your experience with the content on
websites? If you have a website, did you follow any particular strategy in
creating that content and does the content meet the 3 content dimensions? Which
of the content purposes does your content fulfil? I would love to know your
experiences with website content. Drop your responses in the comment section
and let’s have a discussion on content creation.
Cheers
Angella
