by Mark Bloom | Apr 9, 2019 | Small Business Advice
The Ways to Market Your Business Are Many
While it sounds like faux advice from a character in a science fiction movie, there is actually a lot of wisdom in “There is no trying; there is only doing.” Especially when it comes to ways to market your business. You can sit down with a marketing guru and plan out your marketing attack. You can write a business plan that looks five years into the future. Ultimately, you have to stop planning and do something.
And when it comes to marketing your small business, all your planning may come to naught. There may be a flaw in your plan or a mistake in its execution. It may not even be your fault. But more marketing misses than hits. That is the honest truth.
Many Ways to Market Your Business
When it comes to ways to market your business, you have hundreds of options, from hiring a high school kid to stand on a street corner with a sign and a funny costume to hiring a firm to produce a commercial for the Super Bowl. It’s all marketing — and yes, advertising is a subset of marketing.
Other examples of marketing that may or may not work for your business include:
- Billboard ads
- Distributed flyers
- Search engine optimization
- Sponsoring events
- Auto wraps
- Pay-per-click online ads
- Contests
- Special sales events
- Blogging
- Radio spots
- Social media
- Giveaways
- Press releases
With so many choices — and there are many more — which do you try? How do you select the strategy that may work best for you? The answer may surprise you.
Lesson #1: There Is No Trying
Remember the title of this blog post: There Is No Trying; There Is Only Doing. No matter where you decide to start, no matter which strategy you decide to begin with, you must give it your best shot. Don’t hold back. If you can afford a billboard ad, ask yourself if you can afford two, in different parts of your city. Make them different and compare the return on investment for each.
Give your initial strategy time to succeed. While paid advertising (online or off) may yield immediate results, some strategies, like blogging or radio spots, may take time to penetrate to your audience. If you’re prepared to pour money into a marketing effort, make sure you have enough reserves to give it the time it needs to succeed.
Lesson #2: There Is Only Doing
But if your strategy isn’t working, stop doing it and move on to the next campaign. This advice may sound contradictory to Lesson #1, but it’s not. Because there are so many ways to market your business, you’d be foolish to pour everything into one option. Especially if it’s not bringing home the bacon.
If your billboard ads have only brought in one or two customers in six months, stop paying for it and put that money into a different marketing effort. If, after six months of promoting your well-written blog posts, no one even likes them, it’s time to try Plan B. Give a campaign time to succeed, but recognize when it’s just not working.
Know When to Do It Yourself … and When You Can’t
Planning your initial marketing campaign is an exciting time for your business. If you know your industry and your market — and how to reach them — then go for it yourself. Plan your strategy, unleash your attack and track the results. If that’s too ambitious for you or you just don’t have the time to devote to it, call in a marketing pro.
The same advice holds true for marketing campaigns that involve writing expertise. If you’re capable and can paint a marketing phrase like a master, go for it. Otherwise, we recommend hiring professional writers like those at Ray Access. We provide the means for marketing your business that have a better chance of succeeding.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 19, 2019 | Website Content
Writing Pros Explain What Goes on a Homepage
Putting a website together is hard work when you have to do it all yourself. No matter what platform you use — WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy or even HTML — you have to make lots of decisions and somehow trust that it’s all going to work out. If you get any one of factors wrong, it can lead to an ineffective, invisible or just plain awful website.
And arguably the most important page of your site is your homepage. It’s the first page most visitors see and the root of your whole site. So what goes on a homepage? Welcome to a primer on that very topic, presented to you by the professional content providers at Ray Access.
What Does a Homepage Have to Do?
Before getting to what goes on a homepage, let’s explain the role your homepage has to fill. This will go a long way to help you understand the rest of this article. With this in mind, your homepage has to:
- Capture your visitors’ attention
- Introduce your business
- Reinforce that your visitors are in the right place
- Give your visitors something to read, watch and/or do
- Direct your visitors to your interior pages
Ultimately, your homepage has to do everything possible to keep visitors on your site. Assuming a visitor arrives looking for something that your business does, you have about 30 seconds to make your pitch, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. That’s a lot to ask of one web page.
So What Goes on a Homepage?
There are seven things that you absolutely, positively must put on your website homepage to accomplish your goals and keep visitors on your site longer than 30 seconds. Consider:
- Your business name and tagline. Don’t keep visitors guessing where they ended up. Your business name must be front and center. Include a tagline that defines your business or competitive advantage. For example, your tagline may be: “Better than doing it yourself” or “The best resource for doing it yourself.
- Your contact information. Believe it or not, some visitors to your website want to contact you without much prodding. You’re doing them a disservice if you don’t list your hours and contact information (location, phone number and email address) right where they can find it easily. This one of the most frequently missed items of what goes on a homepage.
- An easy-to-follow navigation menu. How you direct your visitors to more information makes a huge difference in how they interact with your site. Keep your menu options clear: Products, Services, FAQs, About, Contact — whatever makes sense for your business. For example, Ray Access has two types of clients: businesses and agencies, so our menu directs each to a separate menu of choices. Above the fold.
- Calls to action. Give your visitors something to do, whether it’s a contact form to fill out or an opportunity to learn more about your business. Make your call-to-action button big and obvious. Give it a distinct color. You can have more than one call-to-action on your homepage, but one should be primary. What do visitors want from your business?
- Effective content. You need to state your case and explain why you’re in business. When it comes to what goes on a homepage, this is the essence. The content on your homepage has to give your pitch:
- Your primary market or audience — who are you selling to?
- The problem you solve for your customers — what benefits do your customers get from you?
- Your competitive advantage — why should visitors buy from you?
- Several testimonials or social proof — who else has bought from you?
- Compelling reasons to dig deeper — why should visitors click to your interior pages?
- Arresting media. Capture your visitors’ attention. If you have a video explaining your business or your competitive advantage, put it on your homepage. Use interesting, unusual or vibrant images on the page. Stock images get old fast. Everything on your homepage needs to relate to the issues you can solve for your visitors.
- SEO keywords. Part of what goes on a website is what helps bring people to it. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) keywords come in. Ray Access believes in one percent keyword density — that’s one keyword for every 100 words — which works without hitting visitors over the head again and again, because no one likes that.
Now that you know what goes on a homepage, go ahead and create your awesome website. But if you need help with effective content, Ray Access has for professional writers and editors who do it right for you.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 5, 2019 | Small Business Advice
Make Your Site More Effective for Your Business
Every business wants a successful website. Every successful website draws people in, encourages contact and generates leads. In other words, every website is a potential source of new customers, an opportunity for you to make your pitch and a chance to educate your customers.
A poor website isn’t just a missed opportunity, it actually can hurt your business, since potential customers can click away to find your competition. Don’t let that happen to you. A great website is another tool in your marketing toolbox. It’s one more way to connect to your target audience.
Ray Access, with experience researching and crafting highly effective websites, has put together a list of five ways you can improve your website. And these are things you can do as soon as today.
1. Assess Your Website
To improve your website, you first have to know what works and what doesn’t. That’s just common sense. To move forward, you first have to know where you are. You can hire consultants to come in to do a months-long study of your site. They’ll track page hits and how long visitors spend on each page. It will likely cost you thousands of dollars to point out things you may already know, or at least suspect.
Or you can hire Ray Access to do a website assessment. An assessment is a page-by-page review of your site from a visitor’s point of view. In other words, it inspects the user experience (UX) of your site. The report includes design, content, usability, navigation and presentation. What works? What’s missing? What can make it better? It’s all in a website assessment.
2. Upgrade the Technology
According to Forbes Magazine, your site needs to be fast, safe and mobile-friendly. All three factors are vitally important to ranking your website high and providing a positive user experience. You may need help accomplishing these goals, but they will make a difference in how your site is perceived.
Since the internet is all technology, improve your website by upgrading the technology. To the point:
- Speed helps your website load faster. Making anyone wait for your site to load is essentially putting up a wall between your site and your visitors. Speeding up your site encourages visitors to stay.
- Safety has become a primary issue, especially if you’re taking credit card or other personal information. At the very least, your site should have secure sockets layer (SSL) enabled.
- Mobile-friendly sites don’t just render more seamlessly on smaller connected devices, but they rank better in Google searches. Don’t fall behind the curve; improve your website by making sure it’s mobile-friendly.
3. Add Testimonials
With the advent of pay-per-click campaigns, there have been many studies on what makes a successful landing page — the page the ad sends you to. It doesn’t have to be your home page. In fact, it’s better if it’s a targeted page made especially for that ad. And one of the most successful components of good landing pages is “social proof.”
Social proof is basically testimonials on the page from previous customers. But they must be believable, and the best way to ensure believability is to put a real name, a real quote and a real photo of your customers on your website. Visitors like to see that others have used your products or services to do what they need. It’s a powerful tool to improve your website’s marketing power.
4. Start a Blog
A blog gives you a weekly opportunity to educate your customers and potential customers about your industry, your business, about you or about almost anything that relates. You can even tap into current events as a way to lure visitors to your site. Your blog is a marketing tool to capture more views and more viewers.
A blog also has the advantage of adding volume to your website. More and more articles related to what you do, how you do it and why you’re the best add up to more persuasive content for creating leads and generating more business. And the content in your blog posts can be reused a number of ways:
- In advertisements
- In newsletters
- In marketing collateral
- In press releases
5. Update Your Messaging
Regardless what kind of search engine optimization (SEO) you’re running — or the volume of social media campaigns, every interaction with your audience should encourage them to click through to your website. It’s your website’s job to convert visitors into customers. It’s up to your website messaging to win over new fans.
If your site is getting lots of traffic, but few sales, improve your website by changing your messaging. Maybe you need more persuasive content. Maybe you should revise your pitch. Maybe the language on your site doesn’t connect with your potential customers. Maybe you need more calls to action to give your visitors a direction. Whatever you need, call on Ray Access to deliver expert content for you.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 19, 2019 | Agency Advice
Business Websites Require Specialized Services
Today’s website developers do amazing work. They often design, build and support their clients’ websites — as well as train clients on how to maintain their own sites — all while trying to hit a moving target. The internet keep changing, tastes keep evolving and business clients have become notoriously difficult to please.
So it’s no surprise that successful web developers either hire specialists or contract out specific work. No one can do it all by himself anymore. The types of specialties required include:
- Website design
- User experience (UX)
- Graphic design
- Website content
- Search engine optimization
Website Developer as Project Manager
As a result of this specialization, website developers — even well-connected, highly skilled web developers — often find themselves becoming project managers. Even if they still do the coding, they have to manage others to do the rest. Industry changes have been forced on developers because clients are demanding those services along with the actual website.
And it’s become a successful business model. Many website developers are becoming freelancers themselves, sticking with the work they love and hiring out to do project work. Others have seen the writing on the wall and established agencies that can do it all, even if the website developer can’t do it by himself. There are many examples of this either/or business case playing out across the globe.
Digital Agencies Are Flourishing
If you need a web designer, you can find hundreds online. The same is true of every other specialty, including website content providers. Niche professionals exist, and the smart ones are aligning themselves to form digital agencies. They may have never met in person, yet they can work together to satisfy demanding clients.
It’s a new business model for a new millennium. Digital businesses have an address, but it may be the owner’s home address, a P.O. box or a co-working space. Experts come together through online apps like Skype or Basecamp, where conference calls are pulled together from around the country and project tasks are laid out for all to see. It’s exciting and challenging. But it’s working.
Ray Access as a Business Partner
At Ray Access, we’ve seen the changes too. We align our team with website designers, web developers, SEO firms and UX professionals to offer website content, blog posts, press releases and more. When we deliver to the client or to the agency — since we’ve done both — we become an arm of the agency we work for or through.
Ray Access is a specialist for online content. But we don’t offer web development services or graphic design or SEO. We have allied partners for that. And when we work through a website developer, we make that agency seem like they’re the experts in website content, even though we’re doing all the work.
Find Your Digital Partner
So if you’re a website developer, SEO firm, web designer or UX pro, find others you trust to do the work you can’t or don’t want to do. Develop a partnership, so that no matter which one of you brings in the client, you all get some work to do, each to his own specialty. Everyone wins in this scenario, especially the client, who gets the best of all worlds!
Ray Access is still actively seeking partners for web developer, SEO and design services. If that’s you, contact us and let us know what you do and what you’re looking for. Together, we can all astound our clients and deliver functional websites that streak to the top of the search results. And isn’t that the point of our efforts?
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 12, 2019 | Agency Advice
Get Ahead of the Curve with this Website Tip
Websites continue to change, but what will be the website trend in 2019? Website content? Blog posts? Nope.
This deer knows the website trend in 2019.
Over the years, as the internet itself has evolved, websites have served a variety of purposes. But regardless what your website is supposed to do, every effective site shares several characteristics:
- Inviting design, which uses text, graphics, colors and styles, as well as effects to entice visitors to stay on the site
- Ease of navigation, which makes navigation on the site intuitive, so even new visitors can find their way around and get to the information they’re seeking
- Load speed, which determines how quickly your pages load in a visitor’s internet browser and device
Which Is the Website Trend in 2019?
Ray Access doesn’t employ website designers, so we can’t speak to how designs are changing online, except to note that new designs are breaking down the boxed-in framework. If you want to learn more, go here.
Navigation hasn’t changed that much. Menus are listed at the top of the page, along the side of the page or collapsed into a so-called “hamburger” — three short horizontal lines, stacked one on top of another. Click the hamburger to open the menu. Your navigation choice is part of your site’s style, but it has to be consistent across your site.
Load speed is one area that has been evolving quickly and has made a huge difference in the effectiveness of websites. There are many factors that affect your load speed, and we’re predicting that improving your site’s speed is going to be the biggest website trend in 2019.
Why Page Load Time Is Important
How fast your website loads directly relates to its success. According to Unbounce.com, nearly three-quarters of consumers admit that a slow page speed stops them from buying something. The prevailing attitude is summed up in this quote by Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media:
“Web pages don’t have loading bars. So when the page is slow, the visitor doesn’t know if the delay will be another 500 milliseconds or 15 seconds. Maybe it will never load. And the back button is right there.”
Additionally, Google recommends that your site load in five seconds or faster at a standard connection. So if you have a slow site, the search engine giant may penalize you. While Google’s algorithms are secret, it’s no secret that they want to deliver positive experiences for their users, and they consider slow load speed a poor user experience.
Factors Influencing Your Site’s Load Time
You may think connection speed is the determining factor for how fast your site loads, but that’s incorrect. If you’re browsing the internet on your 3G cell phone, every site loads at about the same rate, relatively speaking. It’s other factors that can influence the relative website speeds.
So the website trend in 2019 is to make your site load as quickly as possible. Factors that influence how fast your site loads include:
- The image sizes on your site
- The complexity of your site’s code
- The number of operations going on in the background
- Your website host’s capabilities
How to Improve Your Website Speed
You have some control over the factors that slow down your website. A little background work can do wonders for your load time. For example:
- Resize all your images so that they’re no bigger than the size they’ll be displayed on your website. Then upload them again to your site, using the same filename. The goal is to make the file sizes as small as possible.
- Use mobile-friendly templates for your website and clean, concise code. Ask a programmer for help if you need it. Getting your pages to load quickly is the top website trend in 2019, and totally worth the expense. Slow sites lose visitors, engagement and sales.
- Make sure you don’t have clunky plugins or other apps running in the background when a visitor comes to your site. Your pages will load faster without all that competition for bandwidth.
- Pay what it takes for a website host that can handle all the traffic you’re going to get. It’s about computing power on your host’s end and (again) competition for the bandwidth coming into your website. One recommended host that can handle this website trend in 2019 is HostPapa.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 21, 2019 | Small Business Advice
How to Get What You Need from a Copywriter
Despite our obvious bias — Ray Access is a company that performs copywriting services after all — we’ve learned a thing or two from our clients and our experience. Working with copywriters can be as easy as ordering a pizza … or it can be fraught with missed signals and unacceptable deliverables. How can you get more of the former and less of the latter?
Copywriting is an art and a science. Give the exact same assignment to two different copywriters, and you may get two very different articles back. When trying to make sense of it, you invariably want to blame the writer:
- You didn’t follow the directions.
- This isn’t what I asked for.
- How did you get this from my request?
The Blame Game
Whose fault is it really? You know what you want. The writer thinks she understands. And yet there may be a hidden chasm between the two of you. In reality, maybe both parties are at fault.
Working with copywriters is often less like ordering pizza — with a specific number of toppings, crusts and sauces. Instead, working with copywriters is more like designing a house. There’s an obvious foundation, but from there, the sky’s the limit. The more choices you have, the more differences there can be in the final product.
Defining Your Choices
It’s the copywriter’s responsibility to tease vital information from her client. Every writing project begins, therefore, with some distinct questions that every copywriter worth her salt should ask:
- Who is the intended audience of the article? Writers need to know gender, age, profession, and more. The more information you can give to a copywriter helps make the resulting article targeted and more effective.
- What’s the purpose of the article? Is it rhetorical, to persuade the audience into action? Is it informational, to impart insight? Or is it entertainment, to delight the readers?
- How will the article be published? If it’s a blog post, that specifies a particular type of writing. If it’s for a magazine, then it has to have a different focus. The media affects the message.
If you want to be successful working with copywriters, be clear about how you answer these questions. Still, copywriters need to keep asking questions until they’re satisfied that they fully understand the assignment. When there are too many choices, the results can vary widely.
Tone It Down to a Point
Once you’ve defined what the article is about, make sure your copywriter knows what tone to adopt. The tone plays a large role in how the article is perceived by readers. There are many, many ways to deliver the same information, such as:
- Playfully
- Dead seriously
- Friendly
- Factual
- Formally
- Humorously
- Anecdotally
Ray Access spends the time to get the tone right, because only when your article is delivered the right way will it connect with your intended audience. We work with new clients to find the balance between professional quality and on-target effectiveness. Sometimes, it takes several back-and-forth efforts to get it right.
Know What to Expect
When working with copywriters, you generally want to avoid surprises. A surprise is getting an article, blog post, website page or press release that isn’t anything like what you expected. Just as journalists are trained to ask the right questions, copywriters know to ask for clarification when needed.
But assumptions still get in the way, most often unconsciously. Assumptions lead to unasked, and unanswered, questions. So become detail-oriented. Spend more time at the beginning of a project so you won’t have to use even more time at the end of it — on revisions, rewrites and do-overs. Take it from professional copywriters.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 7, 2019 | Content Provider
And Why Your Business Should Hire Ray Access
For the purposes of this generalist vs. specialist article, a generalist is a person who knows a little about a lot of things. A specialist, on the other hand, knows a lot about one thing. The most-used analogy has to do with medical practitioners. A generalist may diagnose or recognize a condition, but he still sends you to a specialist for treatment.
What’s the difference between a generalist vs. specialist? They both look the same.
It’s common to think about specialists in this way, no matter what the industry. A generalist accountant may be able to handle all your finances, but it may take a specialist in estate planning, for example, to really get the most out of your wealth.
While specialists often do things that generalists can’t, they have disadvantages when comparing generalist vs. specialist. Typically:
- Specialists cost more.
- Specialists only perform the narrow-band service of their specialty.
- You often need a generalist before seeking a specialist.
The Generalist vs. Specialist Debate
And so the debate goes on. For the past decade, business experts (i.e., specialists) encouraged businesses to specialize to gain a professional advantage, differentiate their services, or better target a niche market. And it has always made sense. You can potentially serve your clients better — as well as make more money — by specializing.
But in many industries, the business trends for 2019 point to the opposite side of that debate because generalists’ services are still very much in demand. And, very often, generalists offer services that specialists can’t perform.
Advantages of Being a Generalist
The most obvious advantage is sheer numbers. You can serve many, many more clients as a generalist than you can as a specialist. The generalist vs. specialist client list may exceed a magnitude of 10. But the advantages don’t stop there. Many opine that there are a number of valid reasons to remain a generalist, including:
- It’s better to be competent in many areas than to be an expert in one.
- Generalists can still develop a trusted brand identity, and one that connects with a wider audience.
- The world’s commercial environment is changing as the 21st century develops. Your niche may eventually disappear.
- When it comes to being a generalist vs. specialist, you’re less likely to be pigeonholed by your clients, who may think you can’t handle their changing needs.
- A specialist works with the same tools, doing the same things every day. A generalist gets to work in promising new areas.
- The changing gig economy means you’re more likely to be paid per project instead of per hour. Generalists get more projects.
- Versatility is an asset to many clients. A fresh set of eyes can deliver both remarkable results and new insight in a niche market.
- As the work paradigm evolves, informal business partnerships tie related skills together, meaning specialty services are tied together in ways that weren’t possible before.
Why Ray Access Aligns Itself with Generalists
The Ray Access team has written many medical websites — enough so that it made some sense to rebrand as a medical writing enterprise. But that’s far from the only types of projects we handled. If Ray Access became a medical writing-only firm, these exciting projects would have gone elsewhere:
- Blog posts for an Internet of Things (IoT) business
- Websites for plumbers, roofers, landscaping services, window-and-door manufacturers and accounting firms
- Product descriptions for a prominent pet supply store
- Writing website content and blog posts for website developers, SEO firms and social media companies
- Helping a client in Singapore rebrand its identity and redefine its messaging
Debate all you want about a generalist vs. specialist, it’s just better being available to a wider range of clientele. It’s more fulfilling to be able to help a more diverse set of clients. And it’s more rewarding to work across industries.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Dec 24, 2018 | Website Content
Tips to Help You Find Online Truth for Yourself
It’s a 21st century concept, but media literacy is a real discipline for studying and evaluating communications as propagated within any form of media, from print to digital. In this era, we’re all bombarded by more messaging than at any time in history. Media literacy is a way to cope, sort and manage all that information.
Advertising’s purpose is to influence your behavior — to buy something, usually. Similarly, marketing is meant to promote a product or business. If you study media literacy for websites, therefore, you’re better able to interpret the messages coming at you as you venture onto the internet.
You Don’t Need Another Degree
To study media literacy for websites, you don’t necessarily have to return to school, although such a degree program is likely available. But that’s not what we’re advocating. Instead, pay attention and learn what to look for in the messaging on the websites you visit.
There’s nothing to commit to memory. You won’t find any tests to pass. Media literacy for websites isn’t a cut-and-dried exercise. It’s not something you learn and forget. On the contrary, when you’re media literate, you approach information a little differently.
Why We Care about Media Literacy for Websites
Ray Access writes website content. We’re very good at it, and our clients benefits from the words we craft. In the course of our research, we’ve read and examined thousands of websites. Believe it or not, not all of them tell the truth. Worse, some give half-truths, incomplete information or misleading data. By applying the principles of media literacy for websites, we can read between the lines to discern this “fake news.”
We at Ray Access strive to better the internet by writing high quality content and alerting our readers of the dangers of lazy writing. When you can find factual information on a website, presented in a way that benefits the site’s target audience, then our work is done. Sadly, not everyone agrees that it’s important to “stick to the facts, ma’am.”
How to Become Media Literate
When it comes to websites, you can’t simply read for comprehension, as if the website were a reputable newspaper. You have to learn to recognize the tricks, and you have to find the right questions to ask yourself. In 2019, in the age of fake news, it’s more important than ever to be able to determine what’s real and authentic.
You need to have some tools to help you as you venture out in the wild landscape of the internet. You need to know what to look for and how to spot the markers that may indicate less than the full truth. So here some tips to can help:
- Adopt a curious attitude. You can no longer accept whatever you read — or even see — as the truth. Be curious about what you see. Question what you read.
- Consider the source. Here are several examples:
- It’s possible that an orthodontist is telling you the truth when he recommends that the only way to fix an overbite is to get braces. It’s also possible he just wants to sell braces. Does his website even list alternatives to braces? If not, you have to check out the options for yourself.
- It’s possible that a news site is presenting all the facts about a recent political scandal. They happen, sometimes with regularity. It’s also possible that the site makes its money by exaggerating the news so you keep coming back. Look to see if other sites are reporting it. Real news isn’t exclusive, even if one media outlet first breaks the story.
- Look for language markers. The English language presents readers with a slippery slope of truthfulness. It’s easy to slip into half-truths or worse. A website that touts restorative creams, for example, will use the word “can,” as in: “This cream can give you relief in 10 minutes.” That’s not the same as writing that it will give you relief. “May” is another marker, as in: “It may take three treatments to resolve your issues.” That doesn’t promise anything.
- Double-check the facts. Never take the word of one website, especially when it’s so easy to double-check, with the whole of the internet at your fingertips. Media literacy for websites means adopting a skeptical outlook.
- Look for links to corroborating sites. Every reputable website should have links to external sites that offer objective facts that back up the assertions of the first website’s claims. Did you know that if you hover the mouse pointer over a link, the URL displays in the bottom left of your browser window? That’s useful.
If all this seems too difficult, then stick to reputable websites. But even the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post make mistakes. Don’t let your guard down just because you’re reading a well-known website. When you develop media literacy for websites, it’s always “buyer beware.”
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Dec 11, 2018 | Website Content
A Website Content Assessment Can Tell You
How do you know if your business website is effective? The proof is often right in front of you. If you keep tabs on the flow of traffic coming into your website and the numbers keep going up, it’s doing well. If potential clients are contacting you through your website or mentioning your website in emails to you, you’re doing something right.
When your website persuades visitors to contact you, that’s a win. After all, the ultimate goal of any business website is to:
- Attract attention
- Educate visitors
- Generate leads
- Make sales
But what does it mean if your website isn’t doing any of that? How do you know what’s wrong? How can you determine what steps to take? Our answer: get a professional website content assessment.
Many Factors to Success
A website can be a single page or hundreds of pages. It can include e-commerce, videos and links to other resources. Websites involve complex source code, design elements, graphics, content, navigation aids and other factors that contribute to the success or failure of your site. What do you look at first?
A website content assessment, as performed by Ray Access, examines everything but the code, page by page. It’s a visitor’s view of what’s on your website: what some call the “UX” or user experience. It’s an examination of what works — and what doesn’t — on your site. Our website content assessment takes into account:
- How welcoming your site is, including an overview of the design elements
- Whether you answer common questions about your company and about your industry
- If the language of your website connects and engages visitors
- How easy it is to find basic information, such as your address or office hours
- If your contact information is prominently displayed
- Whether visitors easily can navigate to find the page that interests them most
- How well the graphical elements work with the content
- If your site is complete in and of itself (i.e., nothing is missing)
A Thorough Report
In the end, a website content assessment from Ray Access is chock-full of useful information about your site. It gives you not only a sense of how effective your website is, but also an idea of where to start to address any shortcomings. The report, which can be 10 pages long, depending on the size of your website, is extensive and thorough. Because it also highlights what’s currently working on your website, the report instills a desire to fix the problems, not obsess over the failures.
Ray Access makes this an affordable standalone service. We’ll do it for you as a starting point for your redevelopment effort or as a check-in after your site’s been live for several years. There are many ways to use the website content assessment report and just as many valid times to order one. While we’re often hired to assess a dysfunctional website, we’ve assessed our share of excellent sites as well. It’s never all bad news.
This Is Not a Sales Pitch
At Ray Access, we really try not to use our weekly blogs strictly for self-promotion. At the same time, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer our services — especially for those who don’t have the time, resources or know-how to do it yourself. In our blog, we offer small business advice, writing tips, content marketing news, among other topics.
These are areas in which we excel. We provide our thoughts and expert advice freely, week after week, for you to use in your own business. We share our secrets so you can prosper. But if you feel you can’t or don’t have the time to do it yourself, then sure, we’re here if you need us.
In this case, we believe it’s a valid question to ask whether your website is working for you. The answers may lead you to question what you need to do to fix it. Don’t feel pushed to hire Ray Access to do a website content assessment for you. But if your site is dysfunctional, consider the advice in this blog and do something about it, with or without Ray Access.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
