Ask the Web Guy: How Much Should You Put On Your Website?
July 9th, 2008 by Clay
This question comes from Dennis Braun:
Is it better to have a web site that has less pages or menus than to have one with all of your business info layed out on it?
What a great question! Is it better to put everything about your business out there on the web? Obviously you don’t want to put any trade secrets on your site, but if you don’t include any information about how you provide your product/service then you look like a fly-by-night operation that is going to be out of business next week. And how does this choice effect your search engine ranking?
One approach is to just throw everything you can up on the site, the problem with this approach is it can be very difficult for visitors to wade through the clutter to get to the bits they care about. What’s important in the picture to the right?
Instead I suggest trying to include all of the information that is useful, and no more. That means figuring out what information is useful. When I’m guiding a client through this process, there are a few questions I suggest to help us figure out the appropriate amount of info to put on the site.
- Who is your audience?
- What is the desired action?
- Where is your traffic coming from?
Audience
Are the people who are going to be visiting your website potential customers? If so, they are going to be looking for information about the product or service you provide. What about potential employees? They’ll want to know what the work demands and environment are like. Does you business have investors? Advertisers? Suppliers? Networking contacts? Outside contractors?
Whether you create specialized content for each of these groups or not, they will be checking out your website. When they do, you can bet they will make a bee-line to any pages that seem to be talking directly to them. (If you have a link that says “Hey, Advertisers!”, guess who’s going to click that link?) Now you have their undivided attention… so what do you want to say?
Desired Action
If you expect people to come to the website and place an order, you need more than just a shopping cart. You’re going to need product information, shipping info, and probably a lot more. At least anecdotally, I can say that a large cross-section of the people who make purchases online like to do some research first. If you want them to spend money, you’ll have to earn it by giving them a lot of information to dig into.
If you just want people to visit the site and then pick up the phone and call you, that probably requires less information. For a lucky few businesses, a singe page that is well constructed and though out might be all the website you need.
Traffic
Seach engines like content. Search engines like a lot of things, but they especially like content. If it is important to you for people to find you through search engines, I highly recommend that you spend a little time writing content (or paying someone else to write content) for your site. This is likely the first impression the visitor has of your organization, and you want to make sure it’s a good one.
On the other hand if most of the visitors to your site are people who typed it in off your business card because they met you at a networking event, let the audience and desired action guide you. The amount of information on your website won’t effect how much traffic you get. Also, you won’t need to worry about giving visitors introductory information to your business. You’ve already covered that in person, so move right into the juicy stuff.
