Image courtesy of Bogenfreund

You just contracted with the best designer in town and had a new website put together. You admit it looks great – just the right measure of flash and professionalism. Since you’ve changed the design though, your web sales are down. Google Analytics is showing that people aren’t just clicking on the categories and posts on your home page. What happened?

If you’re serious about finding the answer to this question then you need to ask your customers. Perhaps there’s one or two who you always get feedback from when you introduce a new product. Ask them to visit your site and take a look around. Ask them to purchase an item, or try and find out information. Ask them what’s missing. You may be surprised to hear what they say.

I was recently working with an author over a few blog posts I was doing. She was kind enough to go through the website and give feedback. She gave me a step by step report of going through the site from the perspective of a teacher trying to find a book to purchase. And when I saw it through those eyes, it was confusing. I had made some decisions based on what I knew about the site, instead of doing it from the perspective of my ideal customer. The design was confusing. Beautiful, but confusing. It was inhibiting sales.

Another thing the author pointed out, was that she was very comfortable with the old design, and that this one took some getting used to. Instead of listing prices individually next to items, I had put them in a drop down box. When she went to the page, she had a difficult time locating the appropriate prices because she was still expecting to find the information in a way similar to the old website. I added pricing information as text, but kept the drop down menu for ordering. This quickly solved the problem, and sales on the site increased.

Since that experience, I have learned how important it is to have a non-biased third party view the site and test usability. Pretty is nice, but if the ROI is little to none, what was the point of pretty?

photo credit: Vince Kusters

I have been a fan of WordPress for several years now. I had been hard coding sites for a while and found it time consuming. Instead of providing content, I was constantly redesigning the look and feel. Then a friend introduced me to the WordPress platform – and I was in heaven. While I can still tweak the look and feel of the site to my hearts content (and without learning a completely new programming language!) it allows me to focus on what I really want to do: post quality content.

Content is King

You’ve read it over and over, that without quality content you’re website is over before it has started. So for a writer you want to make sure that the platform you choose for your website allows you to put in your content easily. I chose WordPress because of how user friendly the back end is for people who are providing content. I can access it from anywhere and put in content – and so can other authors. I want my guest authors, or myself to be able to easily put in photos, video and text and I don’t want to have to code the layout every time I get a Word document. Which leads us to the second reason WordPress is perfect for writers….

Design is Queen

Presenting the content in a clean fashion is almost as important as the content you provide. If your page is covered in several different blocks of text without formatting or color to differentiate where one thought begins and another ends, your readers will be confused. I can’t tell you how upset I have been when I clicked on an advertisement link that I thought was part of the content I was reading and then having to click back to find the original. Sometimes, the simplest design addition of a different background tint for a different section can make all the difference to your reader.

WordPress makes this easy for the writer by providing easy instructions on how to upgrade themes. You can often find these for free in theme directories. The template I am using for this website was made by David Hoyt and was found in the WordPress.com Theme collection. It’s a simple theme very well executed. I just tweaked a couple of settings and ta-daa – easy to read, classic, website. Thanks to David’s hard work, I can move beyond worrying about the design and concentrate on my content.

The other thing to keep in mind when looking at design is bandwidth. Without going into all of the details of image size reduction, you can tell if you’re website is suffering from bandwidth problems if it takes a very long time for your page to load. It doesn’t even have to be images. If you have a link to an off-site ad network that takes forever to load, it’s possible that your text will not be displayed until the ad is. This keeps your reader waiting. And if they want to look at multiple posts on your site they’re going to become easily frustrated waiting for ads to load every time they click on an internal link. Constantly check to see how long it takes your page to load and if any of your plugins are the culprits- don’t drive your visitors away!

Make sure you keep in mind that no matter how pretty yur website looks, if you don’t have the content your readers need the design means nothing. Again, content and design work in partnership to create a successful blog/website/product.

But the Pawns do All the Work!

Ease of use and navigation will also help your readers find what they’re looking for. WordPress makes this possible by offering two different types of posting: static pages and blog posts. The static pages serve as the meat and potatoes of your site. This is the content that shouldn’t change. Your prices, your portfolio, client statements, etc. This is all of the stuff you want your readers to have super easy access to.

The blog posts are part of the new wave of content marketing. Constantly changing content that helps build a relationship with your readers over time. WordPress allows you to create both types of content with the simple press of a button. Both of which are easy to edit, thus allowing you to change your prices, put new items into your portfolio or add a new quote from one of your clients.

WordPress allows you to easily update the areas of content and design so you can work on creating. With all of the other things you’re trying to accomplish as a Freelance Writer you’ll need to find tools like WordPress to simplify delivery to your audience.