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Your website content plays one of the most important roles in creating your online presence. It can tell the story of your unique brand, illustrate your service, and drive potential customers to purchase. Once you’ve chosen the perfect website template, the next step is to figure out what types of content your website needs most. From blog posts to logos, there are many kinds of content you’ll need to consider if you want your website to accurately communicate your product, services, and brand. Whether you’re redesigning your website or starting a new website from scratch, gathering and creating your website’s content can quickly become overwhelming. Save valuable time by reading these tips before you start building your website.

How Many Pages Do You Really Need?

Before you start typing, take a step back and think about what pages your website truly needs. Drilling down your sitemap should be the first step of the content creation process. Think about your current website, look at your competitor’s website, and brainstorm what the main goal of your website will be. Is it to sell your product, describe your services, or highlight what makes you special? Once you have the main points you want to get across to your potential customers, creating your website pages will be easier. Don’t waste your time creating content that you’ll never share with your audience.

Can You Utilize Freelance Writers?

More company-specific content such as your mission statement, service descriptions, and company overview should be written in-house. However, think about what content could potentially be outsourced. Maybe you’re writing a blog, or need more general pages on your website. If there’s an opportunity to outsource, identify it and take advantage of freelance writers. Ask your colleagues and friends if they have any suggestions of writers they’ve used in the past, or check out some of the many online tools available for content writing services.

What Kind of Images Should You Use?

Images can make or break your online presence, and are the backbone of nearly every website design. Having high-quality images is key to making your website look professional, trustworthy, and can help demonstrate your services effectively to your website visitors. On the other hand, low-quality, or poorly-sized images can negatively impact how visitors view your company, and can considerably lower your conversion rates by causing longer page loading times. Make sure you have enough high-quality images for your website by hiring a professional photographer, or by using stock images. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Website Content Best Practices:

To make your website as user-friendly as possible, there are certain website content best practices to keep in mind. These tips will not only help your website load faster through optimal image sizing, but will also help you layout your content in the most appealing way for website visitors. To make your website as efficient as possible, make sure your content follows these guidelines.

Logo and Graphic, and Icons

Your logo represents your brand and is one of the first impressions you leave with your customers, while icons play a large role in how easily customers navigate your website and understand your services. Follow these guidelines to make sure your logo and icons look crisp and clean on your site, no matter what type of device users are viewing your website on.

• File Type: A PNG file is best for these types of images. It allows you to have your logo set on a transparent background and provides you with a high quality, professional looking graphic.

• Size: Size your logo and icons 3 times larger than what you’d like them to be on the site. This will ensure that they look crisp and clean on retina screens. For example, if your logo is going to be around 250 pixels in width on your site, you’d want to make the logo 750 pixels wide.

Images

As mentioned before, purposeful images can enhance a customer’s experience and help incorporate your branding throughout your site. Follow these best practices to make sure your images look great and don’t slow down your page load times.

• File Type: Always use JPG files for images. PNG files can be very large and don’t necessarily make your image look better. It’s always best to only use PNG files for graphics like logos, icons, or type.

• Size: A good rule of thumb is to keep your image file size under 300KB. For large, full screen images like headers stick between 1600px and 2000px in width. Smaller images like thumbnails don’t need to be any larger than 900px in width.

Content

Always write your website content for actual users, rather than for search engines. While you may be tempted to “keyword stuff” your website in hopes of improving your ranking in search engines, having low-quality content on your website will only hurt your web presence in the long run. As a best practice, make sure the content you’re writing for your website visitors is useful. As a starting point, think of common questions you get about your business and develop articles that answer those questions.