Supplying page content – text and images

Once a pages list has been determined, you can supply the text and images for each web page in Word format, as individually titled pages or files. Make sure you have the rights to use the images you supply, either because you have taken them yourself, have had them taken on your behalf, or have purchased the license for their use from a stock photography supplier. If you need help sourcing images we can offer very economical solutions.

Suggestions for standard pages

Most websites have three pages as standard – Home, About and Contact

• Home – This is the page that opens when visitors click on your web address. As first impressions are very important and attention spans generally quite short these days, the design and content of this page is quite critical to the success of your website. It needs to put across engagingly, briefly and accurately, both graphically and in words, exactly what your business is offering, while conveying a sense of professionalism and inspiring confidence in your ability to deliver. The imagery on this page and use of branding elements sets the tone for the rest of the website. The text on this page need not be too extensive, but it should “hit the highlights” of what your business is about, using links where appropriate to other relevant pages in the site.

• About – You can use this page to say more about your business. This can include a more detailed overview of your products/services. If it's appropriate and interesting, you can include some company history. Information about the executives and staff is also sometimes included on this page, if no dedicated “Personnel” page is planned for the site.

• Contact – As well as your phone and email contacts, mailing and physical addresses can go on this page. If it's important that people be able to find your premises, a Google map can be embedded. Registering a “Google Business” entry for your business will help with your search ranking with local searches. We can assist you with this if you haven't arranged it already.

Interactive Functionality

This can also be an opportunity to introduce interactive functionality to engage your customers and visitors. Something as simple as a newsletter sign-up form combined with regular email campaigns can help build communication with your customer base. Contact forms can also be used to collect customer names, email addresses and enquiry details while subscribing them to an email campaign list.

If you have ideas for other interactive content such as animated infographics, ways for visitors to submit content as comments or images, or anything else that occurs to you, we'll do our best to provide an affordable and effective solution.

Blogs and News Pages

If you have the in-house talent and can allocate the time (or can outsource the work), having a regularly updated blog and/or news page can provide interesting dynamic content which improves your search ranking and gives visitors a reason to return to your website.

E-commerce

If you're planning to sell product online you'll need to decide on the product list to be displayed and provide information, pricing, weight/dimensions and an image for each item.

The look of your products online is critical to sales so you may consider getting some professional photography done, unless you have the rights to use existing high quality images. We can assist with photography if necessary.

We can also help you with decisions about what payment gateway(s) to use.

Not as daunting as it might look

If the above seems a bit daunting, don't worry. We're old hands at this and can assist you as required, including, if necessary, in the editing and final draft of your site's text content.

The answers to these questions will get the process underway

• What services or products are you currently best known for (if already established)?
• What do you consider to be the core strengths of your business?
• What do you consider to be the unique selling proposition(s) of your business – ie what do you do better and/or for a more competitive price than your competition?
• Which product(s) or services(s) provides the “bread and butter” for your business – ie the most income/profitability (only relevant if you have a trading history)?
• Are there new areas in which you see real opportunities to expand market share?
• Is your target market retail (direct to public), business-to-business or a combination of both?

It's worth taking the time to answer these questions carefully as the answers can be used to guide webpages organisation and content (text and images/illustrations) as well as the overall site layout and navigation design.