Knowledge base: Web content development
Web content: Acronyms are bad for your website
Acronyms on websites are bad for human visitors as well as robot visitors.
The use of acronyms (such as “CAD” instead of “Computer Aided Design”) on a website is a problem for the usability of the website, specifically because it lowers the readability of the webpage. Acronyms make web text less understandable, lowers the reading speed, and lowers the user-experience in general. Keeping in mind that web users are usually very impatient it is not a good idea to slow them down. They will loose their patience. And then you will loose the sale.
When reading web text, visitors often scan the text rather than reading it (word for word). This means they might miss the definition of an acronym or they might be too distracted to learn a new term.
Your visitors are looking for information - not puzzles
Good web content writing is about telling stories. There is a story in the phrase “Web design & development”. Even if you have never heard this phrase it still gives you an idea of the meaning of the term. There is no story in “WD&D”. These are just letters, and they could mean any number of things. Web content should be specific and informational.
Bad communication is bad for business
While acronyms themselves do not tell a story, using them unfortunately tells a story of laziness, arrogance and snobbish exclusiveness. It is very rarely the aim to communicate these values to the reader.
By using acronyms you are asking people to pay very close attention and that is a big thing to ask from users on the web. You risk chasing away visitors.
Also a problem for search engine optimization.
In regards to search engine optimization, “business services” is a good key-phrase that your potential customers might be searching for, so it is important to get that indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo. “BS” on the other hand is not a very good key-phrase. Using this acronym you are actually removing this key-phrase from your content, thus lowering the relevancy of your website in the search engines for people searching for that particular key-phrase. And that is of course a very bad idea.
To optimize your web content for usability, readability, findability, try replacing acronyms with their long form - your text will be easier to read and easier to understand.
You should only use acronyms on web pages in situations where the acronym has universal consensus and is so commonly known that the acronym has replaced its long form in everyday use. Situations like this might be CD, DVD, MP3, etc.
In cases where it is necessary to use an acronym it is a good idea to still define the long form of the acronym. On web pages this is done using the acronym-tags, which adds the long form definition to the acronym as a hover-effect, like this example: SEO (try to move the cursor over the acronym “SEO”).
Contact us to know more about how Search Engine Optimization can benefit your business.
What is Corporate Storytelling?
Corporate Storytelling is basically a way to sell your products. No matter what the products are there are certain keywords and associations connected to it in the mind of your customer. So what we do is analyse your company, your product, your market and your target group. Who are you? What do you have? Who is it for? What do they want?
We create a positive story connected to you, your company or the products that your target group can relate to, based on careful analysis. By doing so, we create the right brand association so that people relate to exactly your product instead of your competitors.
The Dream market
What you are really selling is a dream. Having a dream connected to your product or company means that people associate it with something else. People feel that when they buy your product they in fact buy the dream that is created around the product. By giving people what they want and dream of, we are optimising the prospect of happy and content customers.
Contact us to know more about how Corporate Storytelling can benefit your business.
The most important part of a website is the content
Why do people search the internet? They are looking for something, and they keep looking until they find it or give up. Users dont come to websites for their nice design of intuitive navigation (those are reasons for staying and returning). They come because they believe that this website has some information that they are looking for.
Web content also known as “web copy” is the text you have on your website. We believe this is the most important part of your website, and that the structure and design of the entire website should be created in accordance with the content. Web content also includes photos directly related to your company: products, presentations, diagrams, people, buildings, maps etc.
Web content is what both humans and search-robots look for when visiting websites.
Contact us to know more about how you can benefit from web content development.
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