Writing Website Text: Which Texts Are Essential?

You already know quite a bit about writing website content. You know why good website texts are important, which challenges you encounter and what you can do about them, so it’s actually just time to get started. But where do you begin? And which texts do you actually need? In this article from our practical series on writing website content, we cover the website texts that must be on your site and why. After reading this piece, you can concretely start planning the content for your website.

If you have followed our advice from the earlier articles, you know what makes your organization unique and which target audience(s) you will reach with the site. It’s time to take one step further and think about what you want to achieve with the website. Ask yourself, for what purpose will people visit us? Some examples:

Before a conversation with one of our salespeople, prospects visit our site to get a good impression of the entire organization.
> Existing customers visit our site to stay informed about the latest developments.
> Prospects who are about to make a purchasing decision look for last-minute arguments to convince their manager of the correctness of their decision.
> A prospect or existing customer wants to contact a specific employee directly.
> A recent graduate is considering applying to your organization and visits the website for more information.
> Someone wants to recommend your organization to a contact and shows them your website to strengthen their arguments.

Writing website content based on visitor goals

Once you have this mapped out, you will chart a path for each visitor goal. From the moment they enter until the last page, the goal is of course conversion: the prospect or visitor takes action. Possible goals include phone contact, a purchase, requesting information, or a clear recommendation. For each path, you discuss with the related department (sales, service, production, etc.) what information the visitor needs. Much will overlap here; on almost every website, the About Us page is the most visited (after the homepage), and many visitors come for the Contact page, but in practice, there are often very specific scenarios per company.

By thinking about your website content this way, you break down the actual writing of website texts into manageable chunks, and you can even delegate certain tasks. This also prevents having too much or too little information and text on the website. Putting the visitor at the center ensures an optimal website.

In our practical series: Writing Website Content, we cover everything involved. Next week we will discuss how many words a website text consists of; to reread earlier articles, check the main article.