Gigi Griffis

How to Write Your Homepage, Part I

Writing Your Homepage for Your Goals

When grocery stores first started implementing self-checkouts, I thought that it was a fabulous idea. And it probably still is, but now a problem has arisen:

No one is thinking through the language and presentation behind these systems.

The first problem is that the language and presentation often don’t fit with the rest of the brand. For example, reading the banners, flyers or ads for a Safeway store leaves you with an impression that they are friendly, clean and affordable. The self-checkout machine comes across more as loud and passive-aggressive when it asks, in a higher volume, “HAVE YOU SCANNED YOUR SAFEWAY CARD?”

This bugs me because: A) it’s so loud and B) the machine knows I haven’t scanned my Safeway card–asking the question is just a weak way of reminding me. Please, machine, man up and just remind me.

Think about it, Safeway: if you were standing in line and the cashier asked you “have you paid for your groceries yet?” as you were rummaging through your wallet, wouldn’t you feel strange? The cashier knows you haven’t paid–why wouldn’t they just either A) wait or B) jump start you by saying something along the lines of “your total is XXX.”

You need to think of your self-checkouts as cashiers. Automated ones, yes, but cashiers all the same. Your brand and presentation should be just as clear in the machine (if not more clear) than in your cashiers, who are presumably trained not to say bizarre things to customers.

King Soopers, which has won me over due to its endlessly better machines, takes a different approach. Not only does the volume of the machine reflect the average person’s hearing capabilities, but the machine very politely asks the user to “If you have a King Soopers card, please scan it now.” It’s not passive-aggressive. It doesn’t blow your eardrums out. And the tone feels friendly and inviting–it’s reminding you that you could save money.

When we think about content and brand in our organizations, we need to think of it as more than a website, a few brochures and some banner advertisements. It’s the way employees present themselves. It’s the spoken word. It’s the user experience of every system you have–be it online or otherwise.

Your self-checkout system is your content. Your employee presentation is your content.

It doesn’t mean you have to be static or sacrifice authenticity. But it does mean that you have to think about all your assets as a part of the bigger whole.

When: July 14th (Wednesday) at 6:30PM

Where: Crepes & Crepes in Cherry Creek North

What: Come prepared to drink cappuccinos and discuss drafting a formal content strategy. If you have an example of a CS document to bring, you’ll be the life of the party.

Please RSVP if you plan on attending. I’ll make the reservations.

The Qualitative Audit is designed to identify issues with your existing content and answer the question: is this content accomplishing what it needs to? During this portion of the audit, you should go through your content page by page and ask yourself a few key questions. If the answers to the second round of questions below are a resounding Yes! you’re probably in good shape. If the answer is no, you’ve got some work to do.

Qualitative Audit Questions:
First, let’s identify what this page is trying to do.

1. Who is the audience for this page? (Who is it designed for and who is going to click on it to read the content?)
2. What is that audience looking for when they click on this page?

For example: a page about economic development services may attract an audience of site selectors or business owners considering a move to your area. When they get onto the services page, they may be looking for a list of services your organization offers, what each service entails, who is eligible and what are the next steps.

Next, let’s ask ourselves whether this page is accomplishing its purpose:

1. Is this page content talking specifically to the audience you’ve identified?
2. Is this page providing answers to the questions that your audience is asking (from the example above: what services are available? Who is eligible to receive this help or benefit from this service?)?

And, finally, let’s ask ourselves whether the information on this page is easy to consume (your web users will leave if it’s hard):

1. Does the headline (and sub-headlines) tell the user exactly what they’ll find on the page?
2. When the user gets to this page, do they feel like they’re in the right place–like they’ll find what they’re looking for?
3. Is the page easy to scan for information?
4. Can the user download or print information to take away and read later?

Hopefully the answers to these questions are Yes! If not, the next step in your content process will be to fix the problems you’ve identified: if the page has no clear audience, identify one and edit the content to speak to this group. If the page is wordy and hard to read, it’s time to edit and make it scannable (79% of web users scan before reading). If the page doesn’t address the questions of your audience, it’s time to add content that will answer those questions.

And thus the audit has prepared you for what comes next. Now you can allot the appropriate funds or internal resources needed to prepare content, fix content or fill in the holes.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, please drop us a line. Let’s talk about what we can do to help.

As we learned yesterday, the first step down the road of better web content is the content audit.

So, what are the next steps? How does one get started on auditing content?

Well, first let’s talk about the two questions we posed yesterday:

1. Do I have the content my user is looking for?
2. Does that content accomplish what it needs to?

These two questions are the starting point for what we call the Quantitative Audit and the Qualitative Audit.

A Quantitative Audit is designed to identify holes in your content and to answer the question: do I have what my user is looking for? To start with your quantitative audit, here are a few first steps:

1. Create a Word or Excel spreadsheet to keep track
2. Fill in your spreadsheet’s first column with your new site map (if you’re doing a new website)*
3. Go down this spreadsheet like a check list: do you have all the content for the pages in your new site map?
4. Once you’ve identified the holes, you can start to organize your content for upload into a new website or you can start to ask the harder question posed by the Qualitative Audit: does this content accomplish what it needs to?

* If you are doing the audit after you’ve already launched your website or before you have a new site map, use your current site map and take a look at any industry standards that are available (for economic development, IEDC spreadsheets fit this bill). From the IEDC spreadsheets (or other standards), you can identify whether there are pages of information that your current site map is missing–add these to your document.

Let’s pause here so that you can collect your thoughts and your content. Watch for the Qualitative Audit soon.