Translating Your Website’s Purpose into Great Content - A Star Trek Geek’s Guide
If you’ve been following along with me so far, you know that content is more important than design and that the way you judge a website’s content is by its purpose. So now it’s time to start translating that purpose into great content. Here are a few questions to get you started.
Warning: Mediocre to painful Star Trek analogies ahead. 
1. Is the content full of mistakes?
By mistakes I mean things like spelling, typos, grammar errors, etc. While online writing is much less formal than offline writing, that doesn’t mean that you can be sloppy. An occasional spelling mistake can be overlooked, but consistent errors of language will eventually affect your reputation.
There are exceptions to this rule, and engaging content can overcome weakness in this area, but by and large it holds true. So it may be useful to have Mr. Data *cough* spellcheck *cough* proofread your work.
2. Does the current content support the purpose?
If you are trying to sell Star Trek uniforms, but the content on your site doesn’t offer anyone a reason to want them* you probably aren’t going to be selling many uniforms. Or consider the much more common case of a blog that says you should subscribe but doesn’t tell you why. Yes, I’m guilty of this one, but not for much longer.
* “Look absolutely dashing in this alternate future uniform worn by Picard in All Good Things…”
3. Is the content engaging?
Engaging content is absolutely critical. It isn’t enough to just say “You want to buy my product. You want to buy my product,” like the Borg endlessly repeating that resistance is futile. To get people thinking your way, you probably need to be a bit more seductive.
4. Who should be writing this?
Most of the content on the web isn’t created by professionals. Instead it is created by the website owner, or perhaps a web designer or some other member of the organization who doesn’t necessarily have a particular talent for it. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this, but really think over the effect that this will have on different sections of your site.
In my case, I’m a decent informational writer, but not all that great with a sales pitch, so my self-written sales pages tend to sound like a logic-obsessed Vulcan trying to persuade ordinary human beings that I can provide an emotionally gratifying product. To help fix this I’ve been working with Naomi of IttyBiz to update the sales-related portions of my website, and have been extremely happy with her work.
Do you have a horrible Star Trek analogy of your own? Post it below!
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