Introduction
When creating a website, many people think that design, animations, or how smoothly the website runs are the most important aspects.
While these are certainly important, they are not the most crucial.
The biggest issue I see with people is that they have cool websites that function well and even have a "wow effect" with some animations. However, the website doesn't convert.
They are not able to:
- Identify valuable content
- Communicate the value of their product correctly to their audience
- Decide what type of content they should upload to the website
- And their users don't end up buying what they are offering because they either don't understand the product or don't know what they are reading.
This is a content and structure problem.
The issue here is that they don't know what content to put up and then don't know how to organize it.
So, let's address these doubts.
Generating Content for Your Website
When thinking about website content, the first thing to consider is:
- What is the purpose of the website? Is it promoting a product? A course? A book?
This will help you focus on the content and subsequently on the structure.
Once you know the purpose of the website, ask yourself the following questions:
Why is Content Important?
Content is the heart of any successful website. It's not just about filling pages with words but about offering valuable information that resonates with your audience.
This is where many people go wrong: they don't know what type of content they should create to attract their potential users.
What Are the Benefits of the Product?
You may know the benefits of the product because you designed or created it, but does your audience see the value of the product? The actual value of the product is very different from the perceived value.
It's important to create products of value, but it's also important to present them in a way that your audience can perceive the value you've created.
To achieve this, it's crucial how you address your audience. Instead of telling them:
- There are 300 resources.
- Tell them: Over 300 resources to help you create websites infinitely.
Show them the value directly by making them imagine what they can do with your product.
Who is the Product Aimed at? Who is Your Audience? Who Will Use Your Website?
Knowing your audience is important to understand how to communicate effectively.
You don't need a lot of information or data to draw conclusions; you can do generic research and see how your competitors communicate with their audiences.
Refining content with the appropriate tone will help you speak to them in a way that resonates, rather than using generic content that seems generated by AI.
Content should offer information that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. By relevant information, we mean information that truly adds value. If you're selling a product, considering Koala UI as an example, for us, showing the number of resources available to users is valuable information.
Showing users what they can achieve thanks to Koala UI is valuable information.
A good example is ensuring to address topics that interest your users and answer their questions or needs. You can take a map with sticky notes and start writing down the problems or needs your audience might have, and then address them with H2s.
When writing content, it's important to consider how you phrase things, from:
- This is what's available.
- To → Thanks to this, you'll be able to do this.
You need to visually show users what they can achieve with your product.
How to Generate Quality Content from Scratch?
The first thing I recommend is to start by defining your product. To do this, answer some of these questions which will help you define your product and generate content from that:
- What type of product do you have?
- What are the 3 key things your product has that differentiate it from others?
- What are the 3 key things your product does?
- 3 benefits you can extract from your product? What does it allow you to achieve? What does it enable? What does it unlock?
- Why should people use your product over the competition?
Building Trust and Authority
Good content not only informs but also establishes your website as an authority in your industry or niche.
Use verified data, case studies, testimonials, and specific examples to support your claims.
A good tip is to compile a list of people you admire and ask them to review your product. There's nothing wrong with asking for reviews if your product is genuinely good.
You can even offer a review in exchange for giving them your product for free.
Creating Emotional Connection
Effective content is not just about data and facts but also about emotionally connecting with your audience. You can achieve this by discussing problems you've faced and explaining how you've been able to solve them thanks to your solution.
If you've been able to solve it, they can now solve it too.
Use stories, personal narratives, and examples within your storytelling that resonate with the emotions and experiences of your users.
Storytelling
To present a product properly, it's not enough to explain its features; you need to create a story around the product, ideally with:
- Introduction
- Problem statement
- Why this is a problem?
- Solution
This is key to structuring your website because it provides order when organizing all the information on your website.
Less is More
Initially, it's tempting to create a very long landing page to show everything to your audience, like "look at all the things there are," but be careful because a long landing page may cause not everyone to finish scrolling, and they may not reach the desired CTA or pricing.
Therefore, don't add more than 3 sections of features to the product, for example:
- Home
- Testimonials
- Feature 1
- Feature 2
- Feature 3
- Pricing
- CTA
- Footer
If you want, you can add a couple more features with gallery content, with many images, but be careful as this could make it lengthy.
Moreover, a long content may affect the landing page's performance and then SEO could penalize it.
Start the Landing Page with Content
The first thing we do when generating a template or working with a client at Koala Studio is to work on the content before placing any wireframes.
First, we establish:
With this, we already know:
- The product title, the phrase that best defines your product and wins the scroll
- The 5 titles with the main features of your product
Once we have the titles, the length of the titles, etc., we can start thinking about layouts. If we did it the other way around, the titles themselves could shape the layouts.
Use Images or Visual Resources that Truly Add Value
I know that bento boxes are eye-catching, or other layouts based on super cool interactions. You may win the "wow effect" from the user, but it doesn't guarantee that the user truly understands the value of the product or will end up buying it.
Keep it simple, take screenshots of the product and show it where the product is truly visible. If you use overly abstract illustrations prioritizing visuals, you may sacrifice understanding.
SEO Optimization
A content-oriented website will help you position your website much better, especially when you spend more than 5 minutes thinking carefully about all the H2s you use on the landing page.
Research relevant keywords and strategically use them in your content to improve your visibility in search results. This will significantly improve the landing page's SEO and help you acquire better organic traffic.
Continuous Update and Maintenance, a Living Product
One factor that determines whether we buy a product or not is recent updates that the product may have undergone.
This is important because it highlights and lets the audience know that it's a product that is constantly evolving.
So, if they have a problem, need something, want to improve something, or anything else, they know they can count on you because you're constantly updating the product.
For example, we update Koala UI every month and send out an email to our clients every month with all the new information.
Final Thoughts
I know creating content is tedious and requires a good amount of time to think about the right phrases to persuade the client.
But this is really what a website is about. No matter how beautiful or well-functioning it is... in the end, you're not working on a portfolio; you're working on a product that needs to be economically profitable.
Therefore, you need to structure the page well and convey the value in the right way. Spend much more time thinking about the content, and do it from the beginning, so that later the design and structure are built around the content already planned. If you do it afterwards, the content may modify the structure and design.
Introduction
When creating a website, many people think that design, animations, or how smoothly the website runs are the most important aspects.
While these are certainly important, they are not the most crucial.
The biggest issue I see with people is that they have cool websites that function well and even have a "wow effect" with some animations. However, the website doesn't convert.
They are not able to:
This is a content and structure problem.
The issue here is that they don't know what content to put up and then don't know how to organize it.
So, let's address these doubts.
Generating Content for Your Website
When thinking about website content, the first thing to consider is:
This will help you focus on the content and subsequently on the structure.
Once you know the purpose of the website, ask yourself the following questions:
Why is Content Important?
Content is the heart of any successful website. It's not just about filling pages with words but about offering valuable information that resonates with your audience.
This is where many people go wrong: they don't know what type of content they should create to attract their potential users.
What Are the Benefits of the Product?
You may know the benefits of the product because you designed or created it, but does your audience see the value of the product? The actual value of the product is very different from the perceived value.
It's important to create products of value, but it's also important to present them in a way that your audience can perceive the value you've created.
To achieve this, it's crucial how you address your audience. Instead of telling them:
Show them the value directly by making them imagine what they can do with your product.
Who is the Product Aimed at? Who is Your Audience? Who Will Use Your Website?
Knowing your audience is important to understand how to communicate effectively.
You don't need a lot of information or data to draw conclusions; you can do generic research and see how your competitors communicate with their audiences.
Refining content with the appropriate tone will help you speak to them in a way that resonates, rather than using generic content that seems generated by AI.
Generate Relevant and Valuable Information Once You Know the Product Details and Your Audience
Content should offer information that is relevant and valuable to your target audience. By relevant information, we mean information that truly adds value. If you're selling a product, considering Koala UI as an example, for us, showing the number of resources available to users is valuable information.
Showing users what they can achieve thanks to Koala UI is valuable information.
A good example is ensuring to address topics that interest your users and answer their questions or needs. You can take a map with sticky notes and start writing down the problems or needs your audience might have, and then address them with H2s.
When writing content, it's important to consider how you phrase things, from:
You need to visually show users what they can achieve with your product.
How to Generate Quality Content from Scratch?
The first thing I recommend is to start by defining your product. To do this, answer some of these questions which will help you define your product and generate content from that:
Building Trust and Authority
Good content not only informs but also establishes your website as an authority in your industry or niche.
Use verified data, case studies, testimonials, and specific examples to support your claims.
A good tip is to compile a list of people you admire and ask them to review your product. There's nothing wrong with asking for reviews if your product is genuinely good.
You can even offer a review in exchange for giving them your product for free.
Creating Emotional Connection
Effective content is not just about data and facts but also about emotionally connecting with your audience. You can achieve this by discussing problems you've faced and explaining how you've been able to solve them thanks to your solution.
If you've been able to solve it, they can now solve it too.
Use stories, personal narratives, and examples within your storytelling that resonate with the emotions and experiences of your users.
Storytelling
To present a product properly, it's not enough to explain its features; you need to create a story around the product, ideally with:
This is key to structuring your website because it provides order when organizing all the information on your website.
Less is More
Initially, it's tempting to create a very long landing page to show everything to your audience, like "look at all the things there are," but be careful because a long landing page may cause not everyone to finish scrolling, and they may not reach the desired CTA or pricing.
Therefore, don't add more than 3 sections of features to the product, for example:
If you want, you can add a couple more features with gallery content, with many images, but be careful as this could make it lengthy.
Moreover, a long content may affect the landing page's performance and then SEO could penalize it.
Start the Landing Page with Content
The first thing we do when generating a template or working with a client at Koala Studio is to work on the content before placing any wireframes.
First, we establish:
With this, we already know:
Once we have the titles, the length of the titles, etc., we can start thinking about layouts. If we did it the other way around, the titles themselves could shape the layouts.
Use Images or Visual Resources that Truly Add Value
I know that bento boxes are eye-catching, or other layouts based on super cool interactions. You may win the "wow effect" from the user, but it doesn't guarantee that the user truly understands the value of the product or will end up buying it.
Keep it simple, take screenshots of the product and show it where the product is truly visible. If you use overly abstract illustrations prioritizing visuals, you may sacrifice understanding.
SEO Optimization
A content-oriented website will help you position your website much better, especially when you spend more than 5 minutes thinking carefully about all the H2s you use on the landing page.
Research relevant keywords and strategically use them in your content to improve your visibility in search results. This will significantly improve the landing page's SEO and help you acquire better organic traffic.
Continuous Update and Maintenance, a Living Product
One factor that determines whether we buy a product or not is recent updates that the product may have undergone.
This is important because it highlights and lets the audience know that it's a product that is constantly evolving.
So, if they have a problem, need something, want to improve something, or anything else, they know they can count on you because you're constantly updating the product.
For example, we update Koala UI every month and send out an email to our clients every month with all the new information.
Final Thoughts
I know creating content is tedious and requires a good amount of time to think about the right phrases to persuade the client.
But this is really what a website is about. No matter how beautiful or well-functioning it is... in the end, you're not working on a portfolio; you're working on a product that needs to be economically profitable.
Therefore, you need to structure the page well and convey the value in the right way. Spend much more time thinking about the content, and do it from the beginning, so that later the design and structure are built around the content already planned. If you do it afterwards, the content may modify the structure and design.