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Quality content for the site: what is it?

“Quality content” is an old horror story for those associated with sites and their content. And no matter how frightened we are, texts on large companies with many years of experience continue to appear on corporate portals of large companies, and photographs of typical people from photo stock — happy and perfect, with 32 white tooth smiles.


So how does this content differ from “quality”?


As they say about him marketers and editors, this content is "dead." You know how dead language is - very few people understand it, even less interesting. Although linguists are exploring dead languages ​​(and this makes sense!), No one likes to read “dead content”.


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First, let's figure out what content is?


This is what a user reads when entering the site: texts, pictures, videos, graphics, tables, photos, and their visual presentation. Although, as statistics show, good content will be studied, even if the site is not too beautiful and does not adapt to mobile devices (but do not exaggerate the endlessness of the user's patience).

And now - who is he for?


To understand what specific content you need, you need to figure out who you work for - with your target audience. Consider:



Describe 3-5 users that you expect on the site, for greater clarity, select photos for them, invent names and short stories about the thorny path through search engines to your site.

For example, you are a factory producing marble products. You can buy columns, fences, tiles, vases, window sills, countertops, order a sculptural composition and other beautiful and stone - in a single copy or in bulk. Most likely, one of your clients is a certain Grigory Petrovich who has built a country house and plans to “ennoble” him. To be more precise, his wife is planning. She already represents what columns would decorate the living room. She also (let's call her Elena) likes to read books by the publishing house MYTH and go to the theater. She always has the perfect manicure, spare shoes in the trunk and an account in instagram with 5-10 thousand subscribers.


You can safely continue this description further.


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Perhaps they even ordered a home design project, but the practical Grigori Petrovich decided to save a little on construction, and Elena prefers such important issues as the appearance of his living room to solve on his own. And she gets on your site.


Do not upset your customers.



Photo of a smiling perfect man in a helmet on a technological factory background and text:


The company RosProfDobMramor has been manufacturing products from natural marble since 1991. During this time, the company has achieved great success, and its employees have gained tremendous valuable experience in the processing of marble. The quality of products is our priority. We make high-strength designs to order - wholesale and retail. In 2001, the company received the diploma "The Best Marble Maker" [skana diploma].


Can you imagine what is written next?



Helen will get bored about the second line of the text “About Us” and will go to the product catalog. And there she is offered a choice between white, black, gray, yellow, brown, blue and other colors of marble, but not a single picture that would help to understand what is hidden under the "blue marble". Suddenly it’s like with cats: the color is called “blue”, but in fact it’s even very gray. At random Elena chooses gray marble. He reads a page of text about its properties and only at the finish line finds out that this type of marble is not suitable for the manufacture of columns.


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Here we have already gone into the "jungle" of user scripts, but still. Elena closes the tab of the upset, and did not find the information she needs (and she is in the right-hand column, but hides under the unobvious “Constructions for the decor of the rooms” and the photograph of the Atlanta).


What is this story about?


Content on the site must satisfy the requirements of the target audience.


And not only the wishes of the leadership or somewhere accepted standards. Therefore, before ordering (or writing texts)



When this work is done, based on the structure of the future site, you can make an approximate list of articles and photos / pictures.


Every brand has a voice


In almost every brief of the web studio, you will see questions or their variations: “Describe your company with five adjectives,” “How your company is positioned in the market.” Behind them lies not a question for the sake of the question, but the desire to see the whole image of the company. It is not enough to know that you have been working since 1991, your extremely serious attitude to yours is much more important, and that your director personally checks the window sills, and the house of the quality manager is surrounded by a fence made by you (and a proven director).


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So when you are asked a similar question, feel free to tell stories related to your case. Perhaps, in your opinion, they are of no interest to anyone and not about marble, but in fact it is such stories that help to hear the real “voice” of the brand, hidden behind years of experience and awards. And then this “voice” is relayed to customers.


Why are web studios asking to provide content before the start of the design stage?


Because it is right. The human designer needs to know how much information you want to tell about the company in order to find a visual solution for it. It often happens that the designer lays out 2-3 paragraphs of text, which he dilutes with an approximate picture from a photo stock. But after a week it turns out that you are a great fellow, you have one and a half pages of interesting text about the company, and also a video and 10 photos from production. It is unlikely that now it can be beautifully entered into the already developed solution. Therefore, prepare the content in advance.


I would like to finish the first part of our “saga” about content with a small algorithm that sums up what was written above.



In the sequel, we will look for sources of content and consider the tools for its creation.


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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/310808/

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