Is Your B2B Website Content User-Friendly?

Your website’s copy is one of the most important aspects of your sales and marketing strategies. Content that is well written and user-friendly, encourages your visitors to interact with the copy on your website and hopefully to take the action you’re asking them to take.

You content is an important factor in your visitors’ interaction with your company online. If your copy is difficult to read or understand, if your visitors feel like it doesn’t relate to them or they can’t easily distinguish your offer, or value proposition then it isn’t d oing all that it can to help your online lead generation.

Here are our tips for making your content more user-friendly:

1. Keep voice consistent. Having a voice that is consistent across all your pages and which resonates with your target audience is one of the best ways to keep your content easy to understand. If you’re voice is constantly changing, or it doesn’t appeal to your key audience then it won’t be an effective selling tool.
2. Use active verbs. Using active words in your copy is essential to engage your visitors and encourage them to take action. Don’t let your readers be passive, instead encourage them to participate with your content by using active verbs. 
3. Check for errors. Your website should be free of all typographical and grammatical errors, but, no one is perfect. Make sure that you have you copy read, and re-read by multiple people to try and ensure that you catch every error before your content goes live. 
4. Don’t ask for too much commitment. Long blocks of copy require too much of a commitment on the part of your audience to get the information they’re looking for, or a better understanding of your offer. By keeping text skimmable using brief paragraphs, clear headings and bulleted lists you can encourage engagement by making it easy for them to get the gist of your copy. 
5. Keep your focus on your customer. Your content needs to be targeted towards your customers’ wants and needs rather than your company. Remember, you’re trying to sell to them, and prattling on about your company doesn’t encourage anyone’s interest. Make them feel like you understand their situation, their pain points and that you have the solutions to solve them. 
6. Explain benefits verified by features. Including product or service features which are verified by benefits, is an important way to make your content more user-friendly. If you’re not sure what the difference is between a feature and a benefit, of you’d like to read a little more on this topic, you can check out our blog post, “Product Marketing Tips: Writing Features Vs. Benefits Part 1”
7. Avoid keyword stuffing. It’s important when you’re writing your website’s copy that you’re aware of using your targeted keywords. However, keyword stuffing (over-using your keyword for SEO purposes) makes copy difficult to read and understand.  This tactic might help you SEO, but it won’t help your site’s usability, and once visitors arrive at your site, you still need to convince them that your product or service is right for them.  
8. Create clear calls-to-action.  Your calls-to-action represent the actions that you you’re your visitors to take once they get to your site.  Whether your call-to-action is a text link, a button or any other graphic or copy, optimizing them for effectiveness has a huge effect on whether or not your visitors will do what you want them to do on your site. Each page on your website should have at least one call-to-action and they should be clear about what they’re asking. If you want to learn more about optimizing your website’s calls-to-action you can read about it here.
9. Use links in your copy for ease-of-use. Using links within your copy to relevant areas of your website can make it easier for users to follow your copy. You can also use this technique to link to outside references that reinforce your points.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at August 5, 2010 8:00 AM

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